


Into the West

by rosa_himmelblau



Category: Wiseguy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-22
Updated: 2019-07-22
Packaged: 2020-07-11 09:53:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 23,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19926133
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosa_himmelblau/pseuds/rosa_himmelblau
Summary: What if Dave Steelgrave had never shot Stan Dermott?What if Vinnie never even investigated Sonny?





	Into the West

"I don't get it," Dave said.

Sonny was on the verge of throwing him out of his office so he could get some work done. At the very least, he wished Dave would sit down. This looming over his desk was annoying, besides making Sonny's neck hurt from looking up at him. 

"How many times do I have to explain it, Dave?" And before Dave could answer, Sonny said, "You know what? I don't have to explain it at all, but I already have. If you're having trouble understanding what I said, go to your own office and think it over."

Dave didn't say anything, but he didn't leave, either. Sonny ignored him, counting the receipts he'd gotten that morning while he just stood there. Eventually Dave said, "It's my job to keep you safe."

"It's your job to do what I tell you," Sonny said, not looking up. "And I'm telling you, I can go to a business meeting without you."

"You don't even know this guy," Dave said.

"He owns a record company, what do you think he's going to do, hit me on the head with a Lawrence Welk album?"

"Yeah, well, how'd he get this record company? Who is he, anyway? He came outta New York." Dave said that last ominously, as though the guy had come out of the black lagoon, or a mad scientist's laboratory.

"You think he's working for Patrice?" Sonny asked, looking up to laugh at his brother. "You think Paul gave him money to buy a record company so he'd have a good reason to have lunch with me alone and whack me?"

"You don't think Paul's that creative?" Dave asked.

"No, Dave, I don't think Paul is that creative. And you're getting paranoid."

"It's my job to be paranoid."

Sonny just shook his head and went back to his counting. Dave had a point about that, but there was paranoid and there was overkill. His dry cleaner's job was to keep his suits looking good, but he didn't follow Sonny around with one of those steam things to get the wrinkles out while he was still wearing the damn suit.

"Where did he get the money?" Dave asked. "He's some nobody from Brooklyn, how's he buy a record company all of a sudden?"

"He used to work for Mel Profitt," Sonny said. "You know the stories about him, he handed out cash like he was printing it in the basement. And when he finally cracked up completely, you think the guys around him weren't helping themselves? If this guy couldn't walk out with enough money to buy a broken down company like Dead Dog, he'd be too stupid to find his way home again." He'd finished his count, but the numbers didn't match the tally he had. It was probably because Dave was distracting him.

"How'd he get in with Profitt in the first place?" Dave persisted.

"How the hell should I know?" Sonny asked, finally frustrated enough to yell at his brother. "Who would I even ask? Besides, you know it's not smart to nose around in Mel Profitt's business, even if he is dead."

"Yeah," Dave conceded, "That's right up there with asking questions about Paul's sex life."

Sonny laughed. "Yeah, exactly. You do things like that, next thing you know you've disappeared." Feeling a little more friendly towards his brother, he added. "But if you can do it quiet, nose around a little, see what you find out."

"You're having lunch with Sonny Steelgrave." Frank's tone was flat, which wasn't good. It also wasn't good that he already knew this when Vince hadn't told him yet.

"Who're you, my social secretary?" Vince asked. He took off his tie and started unbuttoning his shirt. He hated that he had to wear a suit every day to work. Everybody else he'd met in this investigation seemed to do whatever the hell they wanted, so why Vince couldn't wear jeans to work, he didn't know. But every morning Frank scowled at him until he put on a dark suit and made himself look like a banker.

"I'm your keeper," Frank said.

"I think your actual title is handler," Vince said.

"My job description is keeper. And I want to know what you're doing making lunch dates with mobsters without consulting me."

"Consulting you about what? I got business with the guy, I called him up and asked if he'd have lunch so we could talk it over."

"What kind of business could Vincent Terranova, owner of Dead Dog Records, have with an Atlantic City mobster?"

Vince had changed from his suit to sweat pants and a T-shirt. He walked past Frank out of his bedroom and down the hall to the kitchen. "What's for dinner?"

"You thought I was going to cook for you?" Frank asked, his disbelief practically knocking Vince down.

"I think if you're not going to make yourself useful around here, I'm either going to kick you out or charge you rent."

"Yeah, I should have told Daryl I didn't have time to listen to his foolish questions because I needed to come back to your place and make a pot roast. That way he could have fired the both of us when he found out I'm staying with you in violation of every rule in the book and common sense." Then he conceded, "I ordered a pizza."

"Oh. OK." Vince got a beer out of the refrigerator and took it to the living room, plopped down on the sofa to wait for the pizza.

"We're not finished with this conversation," Frank said. He sat down across from Vince, and he didn't have a beer, so it was a serious conversation.

"Yeah, we are," Vince said, "You didn't have time to cook, so you're buying us pizza for dinner. I'm good with that, Frank. But maybe you should stop tomorrow and get a crock pot or something, so this won't happen again."

It was good Frank hadn't brought a bottle of beer with him. If he had, Vince was pretty sure he'd have poured it on him, if not hit him with the bottle.

"Not that conversation." The flat tone was back. "The conversation about why you're having an unauthorized lunch with a gangster."

"Gangster, Frank? Have you been watching The Untouchables again?"

"You are not going to sidetrack me, Vincenzo. Why are you having lunch with Sonny Steelgrave?"

Vince sighed. "I don't really have a choice. You know who Joey Romanowski is?"

"Yes, of course I know who he is. You can't turn on the radio without hearing that song of his."

"Yeah, well, Dead Dog holds his recording contract. We put that record out—the guys in charge before me cut it, but then you know what happened to them—" Frank was making a "hurry it up, I know all this" gesture with his hand, so Vince skipped ahead. "Well, we released it. I mean, it was just sitting there, Bobby said it was saleable—is that even a real word?" Frank was glaring, so Vince went on, "So we released it. And you see what happened. Right now, Romanowski's the only one making any money for Dead Dog."

"What's that got to do with anything?" Frank asked.

"He's got an exclusive performing contract with Steelgrave, so the only place he can perform is where Steelgrave says. The guy's agent's getting all these offers, TV, big bookings, but unless Steelgrave OK's it, it's not going to happen."

"Do I need to remind you that your position at Dead Dog is undercover, that you are not really a recording executive?"

"No," Vince said, and drank some beer, tamping down his frustration. "You want me to tell Steelgrave that? Or Joey, or maybe Joey's agent? Because I thought my job was to act like I really am a recording executive, and that's what I'm doing."

"No, you're not," Frank said. "Whatever you're planning to talk to Steelgrave about is a conversation Romanowski's agent or manager or whoever should be having with him. You're not involved in this."

"Yeah, Frank, I am. For a couple of reasons." A knock at the door stopped him from elaborating. He got a beer for Frank and a new one for himself while Frank dealt with the pizza. When they were both settled again, Vince said, "I think there's a basketball game on, you want to watch it?"

"First let's hear these reasons of yours."

"Well, the first one is that as a sworn officer of the law, it's my job to prevent crimes from taking place."

"Don't snow me, Vince, just tell me."

"I talked to Abe—Joey's agent—today. He's either incurably stupid or he's got a death wish. His idea was to go tell Steelgrave that Joey's breaking his contract with him. Which I think we both know would have been promptly followed by Steelgrave breaking the guy's legs, and possibly throwing him off a pier. I don't think he'd be any big loss to the world, but we are supposed to prevent things like that when we can, right, Frank?"

Frank motioned with his pizza, a conciliatory gesture.

"Besides that, as you and Daryl kept telling me when this investigation started, it's important to the case that nothing I do interfere with business as usual for unsuspecting private citizens. According to Joey's contract, Dead Dog gets a percentage from record sales. Record sales increase when an artist tours and does publicity, so I have a legitimate interest in this. And if I don't advocate for Joey's interests—"

"All right, all right! But why can't you send Bobby? I thought that was one of the reasons you hired him, because he knows the music business."

"Yeah, the music business. He might be a little better than Abe what's his name, he might not get himself or Joey killed, but neither one of them get that they can't walk in and tell Steelgrave anything. I'm going in asking, and offering him a nice financial incentive to let Joey take a little vacation from his casino and see the world. I know how to talk to these guys, Frank. I grew up with them." He pretended he didn't realize they were getting dangerously close to a topic of discord between them: Vince's assignments. He was a natural to infiltrate Paul Patrice's organization, but Frank had kept him from doing that, giving him weird assignments like Knox Pooley and Mel Profitt and now Dead Dog Records.

At least Frank didn't seem to want to have that argument again either. "All right. You can have lunch with Steelgrave. Just be careful."

"Be careful of what, Frank? I'm going to offer him money. Not even mob guys whack you for that."

"Just be careful," Frank repeated more sternly.

"You're gettin' paranoid, you know that?"

The lunch was weird.

Not that the lunch itself was weird; the lunch itself was delicious. Vinnie had Sonny pick the restaurant not only because they were on his territory, but because he was pretty sure it would be four-star. He'd expected an Italian place, but Sonny had surprised him by taking him to a Greek restaurant, small and unknown, where the waitstaff knew Sonny by name and had a private room ready for them. "I don't need the whole world knowing my business," Sonny explained.

Vinnie wondered if his guys had the place bugged.

They didn't talk beyond the exchange ofa few pleasantries until they were seated and the appetizers had arrived. Sonny, playing host, had ordered ahead, so the food would come at its own pace and they could talk with fewer interruptions.

He got right down to business. "So, you're the guy who’s trying to steal my singer."

Vinnie laughed. "You don't waste any time." Sonny shrugged, and Vinnie went on, "Look, the way I understand it, Joey's got a contract with me saying he can't record anyplace else, and he hasn't, so we're good. He stumbled on this great song and got it recorded right before Dead Dog folded. I decided to release it. Now it's racing up the charts and our Joey's a very hot ticket."

Sonny was nodding. "Exactly. You wouldn't bother to steal him if he wasn't."

"And the way the lawyers explained it—"

"You brought in lawyers?" Sonny interrupted, sounding betrayed.

"To explain the contract, yeah. They didn't teach music contracts at Mount Carmel High, and who else was I gonna get to translate it into regular English?" The playing dumb routine nearly always worked, but it was important not to overdo it. He couldn't just magically get smarter later on if he was a dummy now, and he might need to show some brains. Anyway, Sonny was nodding as though this was acceptable. "Joey's contract with you is a performance contract. He sings at your casino, period, unless you say otherwise. There's nothing in it about TV performances or touring."

"He's not touring," Sonny said. "Unless you count me letting him go to Philly once in a while."

"Like the show the other night? I'm talking about a real tour, big venues."

"He's got a big venue," Sonny said placidly. "I'm moving him to the Sapphire Room, that's the main room."

Vinnie smiled. "You should. But what I'm talking about—"

"I know what you're talking about," Sonny said, "you're talking about him hitting the road. And what's that leave me with? You gonna get up on my stage and sing _Strangers in the Night_?"

"You'd pay me not to," Vinnie said, and they both laughed. "Joey's agent's got offers for him from the late night TV talk shows, plus a couple hundred big places around the country. We're talking some serious money here. The only question is, how much of that cream can we skim off?"

"We?" Sonny asked.

"You didn't think I was suggesting you hand over your red-hot singer for nothing, did you?" And before Sonny could answer, Vinnie pushed on. "Look, it makes sense you want him while he's hot and getting hotter. But these things have an expiration date. Right now, everybody's humming _Little French Love Song_ but eventually those same people will be sick of it, and Joey's got all the earmarks of a one-hit wonder. When he falls off the charts, that's it for him."

"And you want to take him just when he's at his most valuable," Sonny pointed out.

"That's true, but to expose him to a wider audience. Look, how many years has it been since Wayne Newton had a hit? But he's still playing Vegas because people remember him and want to see him. If all anybody knows Joey for is _Little French Love Song,_ once it reaches saturation with people, nobody's gonna wanna see him—unless they've heard him sing other stuff, unless they know him and like him. Besides the up-front money, what Joey's tour can give you is a singer with legs. He can sing at your place 'til he's using a walker, and people will come to see him—if they know him."

"The lawyers didn't tell you all that," Sonny observed.

"Nah, I've got a consultant for that stuff, Bobby Travis. Guy's a genius. You know what one of the places on the tour is? The Royal Diamond. He's gonna come back in the middle of the tour and play at your place, for the people who were listening to him when all he was singing was _Strangers in the Night_."

Their food came and Vinnie shut up so Sonny could think.

The lunch was weird.

The food was great, as always, it was this Terranova guy—Sonny had the nagging feeling he knew him from someplace. Maybe another life, his grandmother would have said, not that she believed in reincarnation. He knew his stuff, whoever he was, he got his info from smart people and he wasn't stupid, no matter how hard he tried to pretend he was. Sonny knew that game.

"I'm not signing anything today," Sonny told him when they were nearly finished with their lunch.

"I didn't think you would," Vinnie said. "You wanna read everything over, have your lawyers look at it, have the accountants figure out if we're offering a reasonable compensation for what you're giving up. I know, I could'a just sent the contracts to your lawyer and had him tell you what a good deal this is. But that would've been disrespectful, and I don't work that way."

Maybe that was a line, but Sonny believed him. He could have just sent the contracts to Marvin, he didn't have to be having this lunch with Sonny. Sonny wanted to keep playing the adversarial game—he was good at it, and it gave him more power—but he couldn't seem to keep it up. For some reason, he really liked Vinnie. "You ever been to AC before?"

"Once in high school, with some buddies. We got kicked outta two casinos, got drunk on the boardwalk, and Mooch passed out on the beach, we had to drag him back to the car. And I threw up. Oh, yeah, and Jimmy got slapped by a hooker we tried to pick up, We didn't have enough cash."

"I can see why you haven't come back," Sonny said, laughing. It sounded like his high school days.

"Nah, are you kidding? One'a the best times I had back then."

Now Sonny was really laughing. "Yeah, I gotta show you around."

"What happened to your face?" Frank barked, but it was the bark of a worried mother hen, so Vince didn't take offense at it.

"Nothing, I'm fine."

"You didn't have a black eye when I left you this morning, and your nose was where it belongs—"

Vince touched his tender nose. "My nose is still where it belongs, it's on my face."

"Its precise location has changed," Frank said. "It didn't do that on its own."

"It got a little dislocated, but it's fine now, just swollen."

"How did it get dislocated? Steelgrave didn't like your deal so he had one of his goons work you over?"

Vinnie laughed. "Frank, I haven't been worked over. I've been sparring. And I think Sonny's real interested in the deal."

"Sonny?" Frank asked. "You're calling him Sonny?"

"It's his name! What do you want me to call him, Ralph? Aren't you going to ask me how the lunch went?"

"How did the lunch go?" Frank asked suspiciously.

"Fine. We talked business, he took the contract to go over, then he showed me around the Royal Diamond." For some reason, Vinnie didn't want to mention how they walked along the boardwalk. "They've got a gym, and Sonny was in Golden Gloves too, so we decided to spar a little." Vinnie also didn't want to mention the smile Sonny got when they were sparring. It was a smile like they were doing something else entirely. "So I got a little bloody, I'll heal. It was for a good cause." He also didn't want to mention that it had been the most fun he'd had in a long time.

Frank took an ice cube tray out of the freezer, cracked the ice into the sink, then wrapped several cubes in a towel. "Here, put this on your face."

It was way too late for ice to do any good—and Sonny had given him ice when he needed it anyway. But Vince took it and pressed it gingerly against his nose. "You making dinner tonight, Frank?" he asked hopefully.

"Yeah," Frank said as though he hadn't really heard the question, but he got out a big pot and filled it halfway with water, then set it on the stove.

"I hope we're having more than that," Vince couldn't resist saying.

"Go lay down and rest your nose," Frank said. "We're having chicken soup."

"What the hell happened to your face?" Dave yelled when Sonny stepped off the elevator.

"Ran into a door," Sonny said.

"You ran into a door?" Dave asked, and he sounded so much like their mother when Sonny'd tried to lie to her, Sonny nearly laughed. He felt like laughing anyhow.

"Yeah. Couple of times. You know how those things are."

"What happened at lunch?" Dave asked. He'd followed Sonny to his office like one of those happy little dogs you just can't shake without giving it a good kick.

Sonny sat down behind his desk. "We ate. Talked business. This deal he's offering doesn't sound half bad, if the numbers add up. It even includes projections of how much we'll make with Joey away, using him for advertising."

"How much did you have to drink?" Dave asked suspiciously.

"What kind'a question is that?" Sonny asked. "You suddenly think I can't hold my liquor?" Giving in to Dave's glare, Sonny sighed. "We split a bottle of red over lunch. You think I get wasted on half a bottle of Xinomavro now?"

"You ran into a door a couple of times," Dave said pointedly. "Sounds like drunk to me."

"That was a joke! We went down to the gym and danced around a little!" Sonny said, finally getting exasperated. "Since when do I have to report my every move to you?"

"Since when do you hide things?" Dave asked, and he sounded hurt. "I don't get this."

"That's because there's nothing to get," Sonny said. "We had a nice lunch, we talked business, I showed him around a little. He seems like a good guy. And will you at least sit down? I'm getting tired of you standing over me like you're here to collect a bad debt."

"I need to meet him," Dave persisted. Sonny just stared at him until at last Dave pulled up a chair and sat down in it. "I need to meet him."

"You will," Sonny said serenely. But he had no intention of letting Dave meet Vinnie any time soon.

Abe and Joey were lying in wait for him when Vinnie got to his office in the morning. "Well?" Abe demanded.

"Yeah, good morning to you, too." He tried to slam the door, but they followed him inside.

"Well?" Joey asked, and at least he sounded anxious rather that just obnoxious and impatient.

"If you're not going to get on the ball, I'm taking this into my own hands," Abe told Vinnie. He was leaning across Vinnie's desk, trying to be menacing, but he was a skinny five foot eight, so he wasn't having much luck. Vinnie gave him a bored look. "Bobby, you want to explain to Abe here why that's a bad idea?"

"You want to end up with a horse head in your bed?" Bobby asked and Vinnie turned his attention from Abe to Bobby.

"What, did you read The Godfather last night?"

"No, I watched the movie."

"Well, you didn't watch it very good. Abe, do you even own a horse?"

Joey was laughing. He, at least, wasn't a complete idiot.

"No," Abe said, confused. "Why would I own a horse?"

"I'll get to you in a minute," Vinnie said. "Bobby. He killed the guy's horse and put the head in his bed. It was the guy's own horse that he loved, not just some random horse. You see the difference?"

"Oh. Yeah. That makes sense."

"Good." Vinnie was afraid he was going to walk away from this and they were all doing to die. "And you. If you go threaten Steelgrave, I swear to God when you—or Joey—show up in the ER, I'll give him an alibi myself! Anybody as dumb as you deserves a beatdown." He looked at Joey. "You need to get rid of this guy."

"I know, I know," Joey said. "I should'a talked to Sonny myself, I just went a little crazy when this all hit so big. How's it going with him?"

"It's fine. I knew how to handle it—he's not pissed at you or anything and I'm pretty sure he's going to sign. He's giving it to his lawyers to look at."

"Thanks, Vinnie," Joey said.

"When?" Abe asked. "When? Do you know how much money we're losing every day that passes?"

"One day," Vinnie said. "One day has passed, today's the second day. Take a pill and relax. When does the Tonight Show want him?"

"Last week! Now! Immediately!"

Vinnie rolled his eyes. "Realistically. What's the earliest date they're offering?"

"Next Thursday," Abe admitted reluctantly.

"Great. Today's Tuesday, that ought'a give us time to give Joey a big send-off."

Vinnie stayed in the office late and he made Bobby stay with him. "Sit down," he said, pushing him into a chair, "you need a class on how to deal with connected guys or you're gonna get yourself killed."

"What are you talking about? They're businessmen, I know how talk business."

"You don't know anything," Vinnie said, putting all the Brooklyn he had in his voice. "I'm gonna tell you a story, the story of what would have happened if I hadn't stepped in and kept Abe from talking to Steelgrave. Here's how it plays out. Abe goes to the Sapphire Room—that's where Joey's performing—and he confronts Steelgrave, tells him he can either let Joey out of his contract or Joey will break it. Steelgrave says, well, if he does that, I'll see you in court, because that's what businessmen do, right?"

"Yeah," Bobby said uncertainly.

"OK, so that's what he does. But it never goes to court, and you wanna know why?"

"I'll bite," Bobby said. "Why?"

"Because by the time it gets that far, Steelgrave's not running the Royal Diamond anymore. He might not be breathing any more, but maybe he gets lucky. If you go to the Royal Diamond right now, you'll find a dozen guys there who work for capos from the other families—Baglia, Mahoney, Boca, Patrice, Vechoff, Cerrico, probably even Aiuppo—there, doing a little gambling, doing a little drinking, doing a little socializing. They're there to watch. Ask me watch what."

Bobby rolled his eyes at him. "Watch what?"

"Sonny Steelgrave getting his balls handed to him by some kike agent. Regular businessmen—business sharks—watch for weaknesses in the business, in a guy's life, whatever, and they exploit those weaknesses to take over his business. It's called a hostile takeover. Mob guys do the same thing, only it's more hostile. The guys hanging out, they all know each other, they grew up together, they talk to each other, they gossip, they compare notes. They take what they find out back to their bosses, and their bosses compare notes. Everybody's always looking for a bigger piece of the pie, and if you look like you can't protect your plate—like if some agent pushes you around in public and you don't push back hard, well, your piece is up for grabs. Patrice gathers information and goes to the Commission to show that Steelgrave's too weak to hang onto what he's got and they give him the nod, and he sends one of his guys to get rid of Steelgrave."

"You're kidding me," Bobby said. "I thought that was just in the movies."

"Nope, that's reality. And Steelgrave knows it, so here's what happens in the real world. Abe tells him he's taking Joey one way or the other, only Abe doesn't because he's in the hospital, or maybe it's Joey who's in the hospital. And if it's you who tries to push Steelgrave, it's you who ends up in the hospital."

"OK, so that's the wrong way to handle mob guys. What's the right way?"

"You show respect. You make an appointment. You acknowledge that you're asking a favor, and you offer to pay for that favor, because you're right about that part, they are businessmen, money is the whole point."

"They? Aren't you one of them?"

"I've operated outside the law, but I'm not connected," Vinnie said. "There's a difference. Just offer a good deal—a generous deal—be respectful, and if the answer's no, the answer's no. You got that?"

"Yeah, I got that, I'm not an idiot," Bobby said. "Are we done here?"

"Yeah, we're done, get outta here. And don't be late in the morning."

Sonny stayed late in the office that day, which wasn't unusual. He liked his office because it was his and he could kick out anybody he wanted. But today he'd been preoccupied, his usually sharp focus fuzzy. Once all the office staff was gone, he made a call.

"Dead Dog Records."

Sonny was surprised to hear Vinnie answering his own phone. "Man, you must be running that place on a shoestring if you can't even afford a secretary. It's a good thing I bought you lunch today."

Vinnie laughed. "I put all my capital into buying the place, I'm trying to keep the expenses down to a minimum until we're in the black. What can I do for you, Sonny?"

Sonny liked that. It was about time somebody started wondering what they could do for him. When did it happen that nobody in his life cared what he wanted to do? Instead they just tried to order him around.

"You got plans for tonight?"

"Going over the books," Vinnie said. "If you got something more fun in mind, I'll be happy to ditch 'em."

"I'm sure I can come up with something. You don't have an accountant either? Are you mopping your own floors, too?"

"No, I got an accountant. I just know better than to put all my trust in a guy who's got access to every dime I got."

Smart. Sonny liked that, too. "I know a place," he said, "best food in the world. It's in Jersey City. You can get there?"

"Sure, just gimme the time and address."

Sonny arrived early; he wanted to be there to greet Vinnie when he arrived.

Mrs. 'Cina hugged and kissed him as she peppered him with questions: where had he been, why hadn't he come around, how was his brother, how was his niece, why didn't he have a girl with him, didn't he know a nice girl, he never brought a girl with him, would he like Mrs. 'Cina to fix him up with a nice girl, she knew several, very pretty, not like those skinny things you see on the street, real women with good hips for the babies.

And Sonny laughed. He didn't try to keep up with her questions. Instead he asked questions in return: how was she, how were her three sons, her grandchildren, how was the business going?

Finally she took him to one of the three small rooms and sat down with him. Her oldest son had been in the hospital, pneumonia. He was better but there were bills, so they had had to raise the prices a little—

When she'd started, Sonny had been surprised—not that her son had been sick, but that Mrs. 'Cina would tell him. Never had she even hinted at anything that could possibly sound like a request for money, not even a loan—though he would happily have given her all she would take. So when she got to the prices going up, he laughed. This was more like it. "Mrs. 'Cina, how many times have I told you you should be charging more? The only other way to get food like yours is to hop a plane to Italy, and that would cost a whole lot more."

She patted his cheek, telling him he was a silly boy.

"I've got a friend joining me for dinner," Sonny said, feeling odd and shy, almost embarrassed.

"Is she very beautiful?" Mrs. 'Cina asked knowingly, and again Sonny laughed.

"She's not a she—he's a friend, a new friend. I know he's gonna love this place as much as I do."

Mrs. 'Cina nodded.

The place wasn't at all what Vinnie had been expecting—in fact, he drove past it twice because there was nothing to indicate it was a restaurant. It was just an average two-story house in a suburb in New Jersey. Of course, Sonny hadn't said it was a restaurant, he'd just said it was good food.

Unsure what was going on, he knocked on the front door. It was Sonny who opened it.

"Here he is," Sonny said, turning to smile at the small, round woman who stood behind him. He grabbed Vinnie's arm and pulled him in.

Incredible warm smells hit him as he came in, going straight for the memory center of his brain where his parents still lived. This place smelled like home, and the quiet, unobtrusive decor added to that feeling.

"Mrs. 'Cina, this is Vincenzo Terranova. Vinnie, I'd like you to meet Mrs. Tondelli."

"Dona Tondelli," Vinnie said, taking the small, pudgy hand she offered.

Mrs. Tondelli let loose a stream of words so fast, Vinnie only got about three of them. Sonny was bent over, laughing so hard he could hardly breathe. "What did I say wrong?" Vinnie asked, and Mrs. Tondelli patted his cheek in a consoling gesture, snapping something at Sonny, who just laughed harder.

"What did I do?" Vinnie asked.

"They don't use don or donna in the north," Sonny finally explained. "Maybe if you're making fun of somebody. What she was telling you was, her husband wasn't with the mob and she's an American. Which is why she speaks only Italian," he added in a whisper, and started laughing again.

Vinnie felt better, knowing Sonny was laughing less at him than at the whole situation.

Mrs. Tondelli made shooing motions at them. "Come on," Sonny said, taking hold of his sleeve to pull him down the hall to a private dining room.

"What is this place?" Vinnie asked.

"You never heard of Mrs. Tondelli's private meals?" Sonny asked.

Vinnie looked around the decidedly un-fancy room, old-fashioned and homey and comfortable. "You mean the little place where the old lady makes magnificent meals for like two people every night? Yeah, I heard of it but I thought it was make believe, like that bakery in Sheepshead Bay where you could eat all the cupcakes you wanted for a quarter."

Sonny laughed. "Yeah, that one's make believe. This place's real. Mrs. 'Cina's old man wasn't connected, but he was tight with Capuzzi. Capuzzi used to come for dinner all the time. When the husband bit it, Capuzzi offered to help her out, opened this place up, brought all his friends here. The whole point of the place was, it was food like home, it was home cooked, so the place had to be small enough for her to handle it."

"How did you find this place?"

"A friend of my dad's brought me here years ago. Now, there's two things you need to know about Mrs. Tondelli's. First, you don't order. She cooks what she cooks and that's what you get, as much as you want. It's expensive as hell and worth every cent."

"Good thing I brought my checkbook," Vinnie said.

Sonny waved that away. "Nah, I invited you, this's my treat. The second thing is, no business talk. Not just, you know, business, but any kind of business. She doesn't want cops bugging her house."

"So we won't be talking about Joey," Vinnie said.

"That's right," Sonny agreed.

"Can I ask why you call her Mrs. 'Cina?"

"Oh, that. Yeah, it's short for focaccina. I started calling her that years ago, Mrs. Focaccina. You know what it means?"

"Yeah," Vinnie said, smiling. "It means muffin. I see why you call her that, she kind'a looks like a muffin."

"Yeah," Sonny said. "Yeah. Another thing you need to know is, the cuisine is different from what you're expecting."

"From the smells, I'm expecting delicious."

"Oh, it's that all right. But the thing is, Mrs. 'Cina's from Imperia. You know where that is?"

"North, right? You said she was from the north." Vinnie said. "Practically part of the Riviera?"

"Yeah, exactly. It's a port town. So, you'd think a lot of fish, but the thing is, it's where the sailors lived. They transported spices, so by the time they got home they were sick of spicy stuff and they were sick of fish. They didn't have enough land for grazing, so not much red meat. Their cuisine became what they didn't get while they were at sea: lots of fresh vegetables, some chicken, not much spices. Mrs. Cina shops every morning for what she's going to make that night. Well, I guess she sends the boys now—she's got three grown sons."

Vinnie was not disappointed. He would have expected unspiced food to be bland, but everything was simple and delicious, partially due to olive oil that had to have been imported.

And he couldn't remember when he'd laughed so much. He'd been afraid that without business to discuss, they'd sit in uncomfortable silence, but that had not been the case. They talked about their families, they talked about school, they talked about movies and music, they talked about food. And Vinnie ate more that night than he had in the last three days put together.

"Listen," Sonny said. They were lingering over dessert: a bowl of some concoction of honey and ricotta and raspberries that you ate like a dip, using biscotti.

"Yeah?"

"I've got an idea."

"Yeah?" And why did Vinnie find himself excited by this?

"Need to give it some more thought," Sonny said. He was teasing Vinnie.

"Call me when you got it worked out," Vinnie said coolly, making Sonny laugh.

Mrs. Tondelli gave Vinnie smile and hugged Sonny and kissed him as she saw them out the door. Vinnie was about to head down the steps to his car when Sonny gave his jacket sleeve a light tug. "What're you doing tomorrow night?"

"Mopping Dead Dogs' floors, then I do the windows," Vinnie deadpanned. "But after that, I'm free."

"Great! Keep your night open."

"If I do, are you gonna tell me your idea?"

Sonny just smiled. "I'll give you a call tomorrow, we'll set something up."

The lights were on when Vince got home, and Frank was sitting on the sofa in his pajamas and bathrobe. The sofa had not been made up. Frank had not been to bed. "Where have you been until—two o'clock in the morning?"

Vince had discovered that the best way to deal with Frank's overreach was to simply refuse to engage. "I don't have a curfew," Vince told him, shrugging off his jacket. "And I didn't invite you to stay with me because I needed a housemother. I'm doing you a favor."

That usually kicked Frank into annoying grateful mode, but not this time. "You were having dinner with Sonny Steelgrave," Frank said ominously.

"How did you know?" Vince asked, not liking the idea he was having.

"He's a known criminal, we've got him under surveillance. When the guys watching him saw you were having a meal with him, they called me, just the way they're supposed to. What I want to know is, why were you seeing him?"

"Because he called and invited me. I thought we'd be talking about Joey's contract." That was true, anyway.

"And?"

"No dice. Do you know about a little place in Jersey City, run by a Mrs. Tondelli?"

"Yeah, it's a mob hang-out. So you didn't make any progress on the contract?"

"Nah. Apparently Mrs. Tontelli doesn't allow business talk in her establishment. She doesn't want cops bugging her place."

"Yeah, we've had wires there a couple of times, but we lost the warrants because we got nothing but chitchat," Frank admitted.

"Well, you can quit wasting your time. Mrs. Tondelli runs a tight ship. No business talk, and you eat what you're served and like it." Vinnie smiled involuntarily. "That last part's no problem. She makes an incredible risotto con ortiche."

"Do I want to know what that is?" Frank asked. He'd once told Vince that until he'd met him, he'd thought all Italian food was delicious. But when Vince had started talking about lesser-known dishes, he'd become skeptical every time Vince cooked something he'd never heard of.

"No," Vince said cheerfully. "It's rice and nettles."

"Nettles? Who eats nettles?

Vince was patient. "After you cook them, they're soft and delicious."

"Vince, I did not stay up all night for a cooking lesson! You cannot keep associating with Steelgrave. Why does he keep calling you anyway?"

"Keep calling me, Frank? He's called me once. The first time, I called him and made an appointment, remember?"

"So what was the point of this dinner?" Frank asked.

"Honestly, I think he's bored. Remember when Mel used to wake me up in the middle of the night when he was bored and wanted some amusement?"

"I don't know," Frank said. "I don't find you that amusing."

"I'm not trying to amuse you," Vince said. He shrugged. "'Course, I'm not trying to amuse him either. I don't know. Look, after tomorrow it should be all set. Sonny signs the contract and that's the end of it."

"It better be."

"You took this guy to Mrs. Tondelli's?" Dave asked indignantly. He'd been laying in wait in Sonny's office in the morning.

"Yeah? So what?" He motioned at Dave to get out of his chair.

"So since when do you take some nobody to Mrs. Tondelli's place?"

"Since I wanted a good meal while I found out more about him. I thought that's what you wanted, to know more about him."

"I want to meet him," Dave said. Instead of looming, he was pacing around the office.

Sonny watched him for a minute. "What the hell is the matter with you? Since when do I have to take you everywhere I go?"

Dave glared at him from the corner of the office. "You met him without even taking Cal. Since when do you not even take your driver to a business meeting?"

"Since I had other things for Cal to do."

"And why do you keep calling him?"

"Keep calling him? Dave, I called him once, for dinner last night." For the life of him, Sonny couldn't figure out what was wrong with his brother, but there was no way he was telling him his idea.

"Why did you need to meet with him again?" Dave asked. "I thought that business with Joey was all settled."

"Marvin's got the contract, I'll probably hear from him today. But the way I figure it, we'll probably have more business with Terranova in the future so It would be a good idea to get to know him better."

"What kind of business?" Dave asked from in front of the bar.

"Make yourself a drink while you're over there, why don't you?"

Dave looked around like he hadn't even realized he'd been pacing around like a caged tiger. Then he looked at Sonny like it was somehow his fault he was so upset he didn't know what he was doing. "What kind of business do we have with some nobody from a two-bit record company?"

"Talent," Sonny said, trying to be patiet. "That two-bit record company owns the contracts of some big names and we got three stages downstairs to fill."

"You were happy enough with that contortionist broad last week," Dave groused. Now he was messing around with something at the bar, but it looked more like a science experiment than a drink he was making. Sonny was glad he hadn't asked for one.

"You think she's gonna stay young forever?" Sonny asked. "And with Joey leaving us, I'm hoping to get a good deal on a replacement. You didn't object when I had dinner with Winston Newquay or Amber Twine or James Elliott." Sonny himself had objected to dealing with Newquay; he couldn't stand him.

"That was different," Dave said. He was finally finished with whatever he was concocting, but he didn't drink it. He went back to his pacing, aggressively jiggling the ice in the glass. If he spilled it on Sonny's carpet, Sonny was going to make him clean it up.

"How?" Sonny asked. "How was it different, Dave?" He really wanted to know, because his brother just wasn't making any sense.

"You didn't sneak off to meet with them," Dave said.

"I didn't sneak off to meet with Terranova! I told you I having dinner with him, how the hell is that sneaking off?"

"And he's just up from the street," Dave said, ignoring Sonny's question. "We don't know anything about him."

"Dave. How are we going to know anything about him until we find out about him? Which is what I was doing last night."

"By yourself! And at Mrs. Tondelli's, so you weren't talking business."

"Yeah, I wanted to get to know him without talking business! Dave, why are we having the same conversation over and over?"

"I want a reasonable explanation for what's going on," Dave said, and at least now he was sounding reasonable.

"He owns Dead Dog Records." Sonny wondered how many times he'd said this. "He's putting it back on its feet. But they have a lot of talent under contract, which we need, particularly since Joey's going to be gone about a year."

"But that isn't what you talked about last night," Dave said.

"No, last night was about getting to know him, which you wanted."

"So what did you find out?"

"His old man ran numbers for Sal Rosselli, back in the day." Vinnie hadn't said so, but he'd said his father drove a bread truck for twenty years, and you didn't have a job like that in Brooklyn without being connected.

"You mean he was a bag man," Dave said.

"Everybody's got to start somewhere. I found out he graduated from Fordham."

"What? I don't believe that."

"I called them to double check," he said smugly. "Had a couple of scholarships." The college hadn't told him about the scholarships, Vinnie had. "Also, he's got a brother who's a priest. What else you wanna know? Oh, hey, he owns Diana Price's contract, he's trying to get her back to performing. Bet I could get her for us." Dave had had a thing for Price, back in her heyday.

"He's got contracts with has-beens and wannabes," Dave sneered. Apparently he was no longer taken with Diana Price. "You're wasting your time."

Sonny took a deep breath to keep himself from doing anything he'd have to undo later. "Last time I checked, it was still my time. If you don't stop questioning me like a teenager home late from a date, you're gonna find yourself looking for work."

Sonny spun his chair around, putting his back to his brother. He couldn't really fire Dave, he was part of the package, but he didn't have to humor him.

Dave didn't say anything more, but Sonny could still hear him jiggling his ice, maybe drinking his drink. But when he turned back around, Dave was gone.

Vinnie was both looking forward to and dreading having drinks with Sonny that night. The drinks part would be fun; the getting yelled at by Frank part afterward would not. He'd rather have done it in reverse order, but if he told Frank first, all he'd get would be the yelling because Frank wouldn't have let him go.

Things worked out in Frank's favor. They'd arranged to meet at seven at Lamarr's Lounge on Pacific Avenue. It was right around the corner from the Royal Diamond, but Vinnie's experience was that the one who started off closest to a meeting place the one most likely to be late getting there.

Generally, though, they weren't late an hour and counting. Vinnie had called to be sure he'd gotten the time and place right, but there was no answer at Sonny's office and Vinnie didn't know his home number. And he wasn't sure he'd have called it anyway. It seemed like crossing a line but Vinnie couldn't figure out what line that might be.

Dave had called Sonny just as he was walking out of his office. "Sonny, I'm glad I caught you. I need you to get up here, there's a situation we need to get on right away."

"What kind of situation?" Sonny asked. "Dave, I haven't had dinner yet."

"It's not an emergency," Dave said but he wasn't very convincing. "But we really need to get on top of this as fast as possible. You can eat when you get here."

Sonny looked at his watch. It took over two hours to get to Short Hills when traffic was good and there was no reason to think traffic was going to be good. "Fine, I'll see you in a couple hours."

He called Vinnie's office but got no answer, which wasn't a surprise. It took longer to get from Manhattan to AC than to get from AC to Milburn, so he'd be on his way. Sonny called the bar, but the line was busy three, four, five times and finally Sonny really had to get going. Maybe he'd get a chance to call from Dave's.

When Sonny got there, there was no situation, emergency or otherwise. What there was was Joey Baglia and his family, and dinner.

"There you are," Dave greeted him with a hug. "About time you got here. Would you believe it? The only way to get this guy out of the office is, you got to pretend there's an emergency."

"You lied to me?" Sonny asked.

"Just a little white one, for your own good," Dave said. He obviously found this hilarious.

"I ought to give you a shot right in the kidney," Sonny said, taking the drink Dave offered.

"Come on, Sonny, you're here, you'll have a good time. Theresa's beautiful, it's always great to see Joey, you like Aldo."

"You ever pull anything like this again, you'll find yourself picking up nickels on the boardwalk."

Dave was right, in theory. He did like Aldo, and Joey was like a second father to him, and it was nice seeing Theresa and Dona Carmella. And under other circumstances, he would have had a great time. But it was hard to relax and enjoy himself when he thought about Vinnie waiting for him at Lamarr's. He was going to owe him a big apology and Sonny hated being in the position of having to apologize to anyone.

So instead of enjoying himself, he spent the evening pretending to enjoy himself while he ignored the invitation in Theresa's eyes. It was not one Sonny was looking to take her up on. Her father ought'a have a good, loud talk with her.

No. She wasn't making that offer to anybody else, and even if she was, she wouldn't follow through without a nice, big rock on the third finger of her left hand.

But with that rock, and the girl who wore it, came a cage. It might have white pickets instead of bars, but it was a cage, and Sonny wasn't looking to walk into a cage—or have anybody shove him in.

What he wanted to do was run away, a thing he'd never done in his life, a thing he was not going to do tonight either. Instead, behind his smile, he seethed.

After he didn't have a drink with Sonny, Vinnie decided to get himself a good meal before he went home to Frank.

Vinnie wanted to like Frank; that was why, when Frank's wife kicked him out, Vinnie let him crash on his sofa. But they seemed star-crossed in that respect. Frank had issues with Stan Dermott's training methods and just assumed Vinnie was going to be a problem. That's why he'd sicced him on Lococco, a case that looked more like a hazing ritual. When it turned out to be a huge international deal involving gun running, drug empires, major league baseball teams, and the whole Bolivian army, Frank, in his infinite wisdom, blamed Vince for all of it. They argued the whole time—he lost track of the number of times Frank snarled "Superduck!" at him.

The squabbling wouldn't have bothered Vince, but Frank always went nuclear, pulling rank at the least opportunity, particularly if he couldn't win on points. How, exactly, was Vince supposed to like him when he insisted on fighting but wouldn't fight fair?

"You forgot your shotgun," Sonny said pleasantly to Dave after everyone else had left. Dave had tried to escort him out at the same time, but Sonny told him they needed to talk some business.

"What?" He wasn't playing dumb. Sometimes his brother really was that dumb.

"Dave, the next time you pull something like that—" Sonny had been planning to light into him once they were alone, ask where he thought he'd be without him. Instead he said, "We'll talk in the morning."

"What?" Dave said again.

"In the morning. So don't be late. I'll let myself out," Sonny said.

Sonny walked into the lobby of his hotel—the hotel he had loved from the moment he first set foot in it—and tried to relax. Theresa was a nice girl, and a smart one, with a great pedigree and connections that could be very useful. But he didn't want to marry her! He wasn't ready to get married. And if Dave thought that once she was his wife, Sonny could put her in a box and keep her there until he needed her again, that just went to show how much he knew about Theresa.

She had a crush on him. Maybe even something more than that. Sonny paid attention to what was going on around him and he remembered her as a little girl who would very determinedly sit next to him, who would watch him, who would smile at him. And he was nice to her because he liked her, he liked her family. But she was no shrinking violet. Once she had that ring on her finger, she would expect to have her say, expect him to listen to her, and the last fucking thing Sonny wanted was one more person who thought they got a vote in everything he did! If he could count on her always backing him up, that would be one thing—in fact, it would almost be worth it just to use it against Dave—and Mack, Sonny knew he was in on this—to see the looks on their faces when he rejected their ideas with, "Yeah, Theresa and me talked about that, she doesn't think so." Let them think they'd screwed everything up and that he was so henpecked he didn't have the balls to tell his wife no, it would serve them right.

But Sonny knew they'd use her against him, they'd talk to her—their wives would talk to her. She'd be on their side, for his own good. And Sonny wasn't voluntarily taking on a battle on another front.

He knew what this was all about. Dave had always resented Sonny being his boss. They joked about it, they pretended it was OK, but Dave really didn't like it and there was nothing Sonny could do about it. At least he'd never been stupid enough to pretend he wasn't the boss. And he was fucking fed up with placating a brother who should just be happy he'd risen so far—because without Sonny, he wouldn't have a house in ritzy neighborhood or that new car. And they both knew it.

And that was the problem.

And after Greco, it had only gotten worse. Tony had been Dave's guy, so when they found out what he was doing, or course Dave was defensive. But somehow that seemed to have added to his resentment of Sonny, and things were getting worse and worse.

Sonny rode the elevator up to his apartment and fell into bed.

Sonny waited until he was just about to head for the office before calling Vinnie. He'd decided he wasn't going to mention his idiot brother's part in what happened last night; in fact, he wasn't going explain at all, really, just apologize.

"Dead Dog Records." The woman answering the phone surprised Sonny. Vinnie must've gotten himself a secretary after all

"Is Mr. Terranova in?"

"Just a moment."

Sonny waited, listening to the hold music. It sounded like something by Diana Price. Good idea, pushing the product.

"Yeah, whaddaya want?"

Sonny laughed. "What kind of way is that for a Fordham MBA to answer the phone?"

"The kind of people I have to talk to, I want to give them something to think about," Vinnie said. "They're all nuts."

"Could'a told you that. Look, about last night—"

"Yeah, did I get the time wrong, or the place? Lamarr's at seven, wasn't it?"

Sonny smiled. "Nah, you got it right. An emergency came up at the last minute—"

"Everything OK?" Vinnie didn't seem to have any interest in being apologized to. Sonny felt himself relax.

"Except for my brother being an idiot, yeah. You got plans this afternoon?"

"No," Vinnie said. "But I'm not driving all the way to AC for a drink again."

"Nah, this time I'll do the driving. There's a little place, just the other side of the tunnel, Kelp's. You probably passed it the other night."

"Yeah, I remember it."

"Meet me there about one, I'll buy you a late lunch."

"OK, but if you don't show this time, I'll start to get the hint."

Sonny was laughing when he hung up.

Eight days did not give them enough time to give Joey a big send off. Claire, the frighteningly perky blonde woman from Preferred Party Planners assured Vinnie. So Vinnie was preoccupied when he went to meet Sonny at Kelp's.

Sonny noticed immediately. "What's up?"

"Ahh, it's nothing. Just ran into a little problem."

"You found out disco's dead?" Sonny asked.

"Are you kidding? I was at the funeral. No, I wanted to give Joey a send-off party, but since he needs to be in Hollywood next Thursday, it looks like I left it too late."

Sonny laughed. "Are you kidding? The problem isn't you don't have enough time, it's that she doesn't respect you. What you need is more money and more clout." He snapped his fingers and held out his hand. "Gimme her number."

"Sonny, you don't have to—"

Sonny snapped his fingers a couple more impatient times. "Come on, come on."

"Yeah, OK, sure, here." Vinnie dug her business card out of his wallet where he'd stashed it.

"Wait here." He got up and went to the pay phone on the wall.

When he came back, Sonny told him she'd be there at two. That gave them plenty of time to eat.

"So, tell me about yourself," he said after the hostess had seated them.

"What do you want to know you didn't find out already the other night?" Vinnie asked.

"How'd you get into this business?"

"After I got out of school, I wanted to make a little money. I ended up getting busted for bootlegging cigarettes," Vinnie said.

Sonny laughed. "I think I've heard that one before."

"Yeah. Ended up doing eighteen months." Sonny whistled. "Yeah, the judge was a hardass."

"How'd you hook up with Profitt?" Sonny asked.

"Once I got out, I decided to see the world on a shoestring. I hitchhiked out to California where I met this guy who worked for Mel. They were looking for a few good men and I qualified, so I got a job on the security team."

"What were your qualifications?" Sonny asked.

"I wasn't afraid to hit people or shoot them. And my aim was good." He shrugged. "It wasn't a high bar."

"You'd be surprised to find out how many people wouldn't qualify. What was it like, working for Profitt?"

"You ever been to the circus?" Vinnie asked. "That's what it was like, a circus run by crazy people. If you weren't on the tightrope, you were on the trapeze, and if you weren't on the trapeze, you were cleaning up after the elephants. And every so often, you had to stick your head in the lion's mouth."

Sonny laughed. "Why'd you stay?"

"Are you kidding? In the first month, I put more money in my pocket than I'd seen in my whole life put together so far. I didn't look at it as a career; it was a treasure hunt. It should'a come with a prescription for Valium."

"I've heard stories," Sonny said.

"They're true," Vinnie said promptly. "Even if they're not factual, they're true, you know what I mean? If it was crazy or dangerous, Mel did it."

"So what happened? I mean, it doesn't look so good for you, him dying while you're part of the security team."

"Mel had a lot of enemies—big, little, foreign, domestic, real, imaginary. We could protect him from them. We couldn't protect him from his biggest enemy, and that was himself."

"I thought it was his sister who killed him. That's what I read in the paper."

"Yeah, but it was—complicated." It wasn't true; the only one Susan had killed was herself, but that was the story the OCB had put together to protect him. "They had a really weird thing going on; I never looked at it close, you know what I mean?"

"I've heard the rumors," Sonny said distastfully.

"There was a free-for-all, before the cops rolled in. I came away with enough to buy a record company."

"That was a dream of yours? Owning a record company?"

"Well, I figured if I was going to put my hard-earned money into a business, it ought'a not just be something where I'd make some bread, but something I loved. My first thought was a garage, but you spend your life with your head in an engine, it gets to where you can't get your hands clean no matter how hard you try. Besides, you can own a record company and fix cars as a hobby, but you can't really fix cars for a living and make records as a hobby." Sonny laughed. "Then I read in the paper about Dead Dog being up for sale."

"Where in Brooklyn are you from?" Sonny asked, and Vinnie grinned.

"My elocution lessons ain't doin' the job?"

"I know a Brooklyn boy when I meet one," Sonny said. "I'm from the Bronx."

"Close enough," Vinnie said. adding, "Bushwick." He looked away as he answered Sonny's question.

Again Sonny whistled. "Your family still there?"

"I got some cousins, some aunts and uncles. My brother's a priest in Bensonhurst."

"You ever go home?"

"No, not—no. The only family still talking to me is a cousin of mine, and him and his wife moved out to Chicago. He's trying his luck at boxing."

"Nobody in your family talks to you?" Sonny asked, sounding genuinely concerned. "Not even your brother the priest?"

"My ma died when I was inside. Pete holds me responsible for that."

"You know, normally I don't do this," Vinnie said abruptly.

"Do what?" Sonny asked. He hadn't realized they were doing anything but having lunch.

"Gossip about my employers. I'm not like that. But the way I see it, when you've been working for extraterrestrials, you gotta talk about it when you get back to earth."

Sonny laughed and the last niggling uncertainty he had disappeared.

"Where'd you go?" Sonny asked. "In California?"

"Stockton," Vinnie said without much enthusiasm.

"What's in Stockton?" Sonny asked.

"Not a thing. It's where the last guy I was riding with was going. I was headed for Hollywood, of course; thought maybe I could be a movie star." Sonny started laughing. "But then I found out they already had Robert Redford and they didn't need me."

Sonny laughed some more. "Oh, yeah, speaking of Hollywood, I nearly forgot." He took the contract out of his breast pocket and held it out to Vinnie. "Here. Tell Joey he's on his way."

Vinnie wished he'd taken notes during the meeting with Claire. He watched as Sonny alternately charmed and bullied her, writing and tearing up three checks of ascending amounts. The party kept getting bigger and bigger and Claire kept arguing that it wasn't worth her reputation if the party didn't come off.

"Even getting a decent venue is impossible at this late date," Claire told them.

"Lady, I own a casino," Sonny said patiently. "Does that help any? What the fuck am I saying?" he added to himself, then he looked at Vinnie. "I own a casino." To Claire he said, "'Scuse us, lemme talk to my associate for a second, will you, doll?" He took Vinnie by the jacket sleeve and moved him over near the front door. Looking at Claire over Vinnie's shoulder, he whispered, "Are you fucking this broad?"

"What?" Vinnie yelped. There was nothing wrong the way she looked, but she had that incredibly efficient manner some women had that made her about as attractive as a box of razor blades to Vinnie. "No!"

"Then what the hell do we need her for? I own a casino," he said very slowly, "I got a dozen broads and two fags, I'm already paying to do her job. Hell, if you're set on having the party at Dead Dog, I can send a few of 'em over."

"The Royal Diamond sounds like the perfect venue," Vinnie said, and he meant it. "It's kind of Joey's home, right?"

"Yeah, it is, isn't it? You wanna fire her or you want me to do it?"

"You're in charge," Vinnie said.

He excused himself to the men's room and when he came back, Claire was gone. "You got plans for this afternoon?" Sonny asked.

"Nothing that can't wait."

"Great! I got one of my event co-ordinators coming over. Don't worry, she's coming from home, she ought'a be here pretty quick."

"I'm not all that anxious to get back to the nuthouse," Vinnie said. "Why don't we get dessert?"

Things got strange after Maureen, the party planner, arrived. Vinnie was sure it was because Sonny made her nervous, but she treated it all so seriously, taking copious notes even though most of what Vinnie said was that he didn't care as long as everything nice.

When Maureen had left, Vinnie asked, "Does this place serve booze? Because I need a drink."

Sonny motioned to the waitress and ordered a couple of scotches on the rocks.

"Was _The Godfather_ on TV the other night or something?" Vinnie asked.

"I dunno, why?"

"Because the other day my assistant was worried about horse heads showing up in his bed and now I just finished planning a party with a woman who made me feel like we'd be going to the mattresses if I didn't agree with you about what color balloons we had. If that's what your party planning team is like, I'm glad I'm not going up against your lawyers."

Sonny laughed. "Hey, balloons are a serious matter when you're an event co-ordinator. And don't even mention cake—cake's what brought down Benny Siegal."

"Yeah, I heard about that, it was angel food, right?"

"I got a baker who'd kneecap you just for choosing the wrong frosting."

Vinnie laughed. "I liked the part where, to make up for the lack of neutrality of the venue, Dead Dog gets its name on a banner."

"I could see you were worried about that," Sonny said.

"If I ever marry the wrong broad, I want Maureen in charge'a my divorce," Vinnie said. "What kind of parties does she usually throw?"

"I think she handled the Kennedy-Khrushchev meeting," Sonny said, laughing even harder.

Vinnie went to his office—the office he would be leaving when this case ended, first for a month at Quantico, then for a desk in the Midtown field office where he'd be stuck for the next three years unless a miracle occurred.

After some time working in the New York field office—which was a real coup, Frank told him—he'd get promoted to field director and get his own agent.  
"I don't want my own agent," Vince told him.

"It's not always about what you want, sport."

Yeah. No kidding, Frank. No kidding.

And the odds of him ever getting back to undercover work were about as good as getting struck by lightning. For one thing, he'd have to get a recommendation from Frank, and Frank wasn't going to give it because he didn't think anyone should make a career of field work. So it wasn't three years, it was forever. Whenever they talked about this, Vince felt like they were cheerfully talking about how nice his prison cell would be.

Frank had been bitching him out about it that morning over breakfast. He was still off pissed about what he called Vince's pointless, mysterious dinner with Sonny the other night. It was a good thing he didn't know about lunch.

"You act like I'm neglecting my duties, but I got almost nothing to do right now," Vinnie said. "The case is essentially over, there's nothing left to investigate. The AG's going over everything I got—it doesn't even look like I'm going to need to testify. So what do you think I should be doing, sitting behind my desk, making paperclip chains?"

"I think you're trying to set yourself up to investigate the Steelgraves and that is not going to happen," Frank said mildly. "You've put in your three years; in fact, you're over your three, since this one dragged on, you're coming up on your fourth anniversary. I know you've done good work but Elias isn't going to give you another case. Not that he wouldn't like to, he'd be happy to work you 'til you're burned out, but he's not allowed to. There's no eleventh hour reprieve coming, Vince; you're desk-bound."

"Bound is right," Vince said. "It feels like I'm going back inside." It sounded so fucking boring, going to meetings with Elias, waiting around for something to happen instead of making things happen.

"Are you kidding?" Frank asked. "Nine-to-five, going home every night, weekends off? Who complains about that? And you'll probably be assigned to instructing baby agents, though just what you could teach them, I don't know--how to be lucky while insubordinate?"

Somehow Frank never stopped being annoying.

"OK, OK, I can't investigate the Steelgraves. But I also can't just blow off Sonny because I'm short time at Dead Dog. What am I supposed to tell him?"

"How about, you're busy running a record company?"

"I don't want to insult him and mess up Joey's deal just because you're . . . I don't know, what you are, Frank? Could you at least tell me what I'm doing wrong here?"

"Fraternizing with the enemy," Frank responded, as though he'd just been waiting for Vince to ask.

"That's my job description," Vince countered.

"Not this enemy."

"I'll tell Sonny that when he calls. Look, I gotta stay here until the OCB lines up a buyer for this place and you find a way to extricate me. When that happens, I'll have a legitimate reason to say goodbye to Sonny once and for all, OK? But in the meantime, I'm maintaining my cover—which is what everybody wants me to do until the sentencing is final on Newquay, et al."

"Who says et al.?" Frank complained.

"The lawyers, they keep saying it. It's faster than naming all the names. Is there anything else you want to gripe about? My haircut, my aftershave, what about my shoes, Frank, do you pointlessly resent my shoes? Or can I go to work now?"

"Go to work," Frank said, as though it had been his own idea.

The phone rang when Vinnie was brushing his teeth the next morning. It was Frank, which surprised him since he'd thought Frank was asleep on the sofa. "Where are you, Frank?"

"I'm at your Uncle's. I wanted to catch you before you left the house."

"Why didn't you just wake me up before you left?" Vince asked. He was very confused.

"I've been here talking to your Uncle. We need to talk to you."

"What's going on?"

"Just wait there, we're coming over." Frank hung up.

What the hell?

Dave was waiting for Sonny when he got off the elevator. "Sonny, we gotta talk," he said in that worried way he got when his mother hen tendencies had overwhelmed him.

"Go ahead and talk," Sonny said, trying to get to his office. His brother blocked his path.

"Not you and me," Dave said.

"Dave, if you gotta talk to somebody else, you don't gotta tell me about it."

"Mack's waiting for us at in one of the private rooms."

What the hell?

"It's time Sonny," Mack said after they'd done the hug and kiss and were seated with coffee and doughnuts.

"Time for what?" Sonny asked. He knew, but that was no reason he had to make it easy for them. After that bullshit at Dave's, he should have expected them to ambush him.

"You're starting to get up there," Dave said. "You're not getting any younger."

"Thanks a lot. You here to plan my funeral?"

"Those aren't the plans you need to make," Mack said. He'd finished his doughnut and was eying Sonny's untouched cinnamon roll.

"I've got a lot of plans," Sonny said. "I've always got plans."

"You know what we're talking about," Dave said. "Your future."

"Yeah, that's what plans are all about, the future," Sonny said. If his brother was going to talk like an idiot, he'd treat him like one.

"We were thinking Theresa Baglia," Dave said.

"Oh, yeah? She's a nice girl. What were you thinking of her to do?"

"Sonny, there's no reason to make this difficult," Dave said. "We only want what's best for you."

Sonny laughed without humor. "You don't want me to make it difficult for you to plan out my life? Decide who I'm gonna marry? I think that should be my decision, and any input from you should be advisory. What do you care whether I get married anyway?"

"There'll be no-one to carry on our name," Dave said.

"Yeah? Maybe you should'a had more kids," Sonny said.

"Sonny, it would make you look more responsible," Mack said. "This is important. Theresa's a nice girl, you like her. Are you gonna eat that?" He motioned at the cinnamon roll.

"Yes," Sonny said spitefully and took a bite. He didn't want it, but fuck them both. "I know she's a nice girl, but I'm not in love with her."

"Love's not the most important thing," Dave said.

"Oh, yeah? Try telling that to the Beatles. Better yet, try telling it to your wife."

"Pat's bored," Mahoney said. "You know what happens when Pat gets bored."

"Pat's bored? So send him a juggler," Sonny said, "or maybe a magician, he'd like that."

"This is not a joke," Dave said. Dave only talked to him like that when Mack was there to back him up, and if he thought Sonny hadn't noticed, he was dumber than Sonny thought.

"You want me to get married because the Cat's bored? Why don't I just throw a big party and invite him?"

"He's gonna come after you," Mack said. "That deal with Tony made you look bad."

"That was over three years ago," Sonny said. "And look how well things turned out. We got the money Sykes paid and we kept his guns, which we sold for more than Sykes paid for them the first time. And nobody's seen Tony since."

"Tony was disloyal," Mack said, as though that was somehow Sonny's fault. Sonny looked at Dave. Tony had been his friend, and if he thought Sonny was going to take the heat for this, Dave was crazy along with being stupid.

"I should have been paying closer attention," Dave said hastily. "I knew the guy my whole life, I never thought he'd do something like that!"

"You can't keep screwing up like this," Sonny said. Dave needed to learn payback was a bitch, and that if he threw in with Mack against his own brother, Sonny wasn't going to dig him out of whatever hole he fell in.

"That's in the past," Mack said as though it didn't matter. Because this wasn't really about Tony, it was about saddling him with a wife he didn't want.

It wasn't that he was a romantic; he certainly didn't believe that love was all you needed. But to his way of thinking, if you were going to let somebody into your life, into your house, into your bank account—in other words, give up your freedom—you damn well better love them or you'd spend the rest of your life wondering if you could get away with killing them. Sonny would rather go to war with Patrice, at least that wouldn't last the rest of his life. They wanted to lock him up and throw away the key because Paul was bored!

Love was the only thing that could make marriage tolerable; otherwise you were just hiring yourself a pretty jailer.

"How ya doin', Vinnie?" Uncle Mike asked when Vinnie opened the door to him and Frank.

"I dunno," Vinnie said, looking back and forth between them. "How am I?"

"We need to talk," Frank said. "Sit down."

Vinnie looked back and forth between the two men, then took a seat on the sofa. "OK, shoot."

"Vince, it's time," Uncle Mike said, and Vince knew they'd decided he would do the talking because it would be softer that way.

"Time for what?" Vince asked. He was angry and unhappy and he wanted to spread the feeling around. Why make it easy for them when all they wanted to do was get rid of him?

"You spent eight months on the Pooley investigation," Uncle Mike said patiently. That was another reason he was doing this, he had the patience. If Frank was doing it, he would be yelling at him by now instead of glowering at him. "You spent nearly two years on Profitt. You've been at Dead Dog just over a year, so what you're looking at is coming up on four years of undercover—"

"Nobody told me three strikes and you're out," Vinnie said. That wasn't true, he knew the limits on agents being undercover; he'd just hoped that if he did well enough, they'd be willing to overlook the rules to keep a valuable asset in play. And he was a valuable asset.

"You should never have been put on Dead Dog in the first place," Frank said, his voice quiet to unrecognizable. "I fought for that and I was wrong—"

"What?" Vince asked. He'd never heard this before.

"Profitt was such a disaster, I wanted you to go out on a win. I never thought this case would go on for so long or be such a mess. You've been under close to three and a half years. I know you think you should be investigating the Steelgraves—"

"Frank, I'm set up so perfect to just walk in—" Vinnie was starting to feel desperation slither up him.

"That's not true," Frank said, gently, implacably. "Yes, Steelgrave knows you, but as the owner of Dead Dog Records. How, exactly, are you supposed to get out of that so you can get a job working for him in some capacity? But even leaving that aside, I wouldn't assign you to that investigation in a million years."

"Why not?" Vinnie demanded, not so much looking for an answer as a fight because Frank's words hurt.

"You're socializing with Sonny Steelgrave, the two of you are having fun together. The dinner, that lunch you had—yes, I know about that," he forstalled Vinnie's reply. You're already too emotionally invested and I've seen how you get—"

"The rules are there for your own good," Uncle Mike interrupted. "and not just for your good, for the good of the case. Too much undercover work has a destabilizing effect, and prosecutors don't want to rely on the testimony of unstable agents."

Vinnie stood up. He wanted to say something but there was no arguing with these two. "Are we done?" And before either of them could answer, "I know, I know—I'm done."

"That is not a healthy attitude," Frank said.

"Really? You're gonna bust me about my attitude? I not only have to give up the part of the job I'm really good at, I have to pretend I'm happy about it too?"

"Long term undercover work isn't good for anybody," Uncle Mike reiterated. "Besides, after a cooling off period—" He stopped at the look Frank gave him.

"After a cooling off period what?" Vince asked.

There was a long silence while Frank and Uncle Mike just looked at each other, arguing silently.

"After a cooling off period what?" Vince insisted.

"It is possible, after a few years—"

"More than a few," Frank interrupted. "A lot more than a few."

"—for an agent to be cleared for undercover work again," Uncle Mike said.

"And it's not that easy," Frank added quickly. "You have to go through through the whole process again, psych evals—"

"You think I couldn't pass a psych eval?" Vince asked.

"I didn't say that," Frank said.

"Oh, for God's sake! Do you think I'm mentally unstable?"

"I didn't say that," Frank insisted.

"That's not it," Uncle Mike said. "It's just that after everything that happened, there's some concern."

"Concern about me? Why? I did not sleep with Susan Profitt!"

"No one is saying you did," Uncle Mike placated. Vince hated being placated.

"Yeah, but that's only because nobody's talking about the case anymore. After she shot herself, everybody was saying it, and saying that's why she did it."

"The point is, the case did not end well," Frank said.

"I know that! Why do we have to post mortem the Profitt case again?"

"You're the one who brought it up," Frank pointed out.

"Because you think it was my fault."

"No one thinks that," Uncle Mike insisted.

"Then why would it affect my future with the OCB?" Vince asked.

"Your future with the OCB is fine," Uncle Mike said. "It's undercover work we're talking about."

"Speaking of your future, you are not allowed to socialize with Sonny Steelgrave anymore," Frank said. "No more sneaking off for lunch or dinner or anything."

"I wasn't socializing with him, I had dinner and, yes, a couple of business lunches with him! I think it's your mental stability that needs to be checked out. Do you really not understand how this game is played? And there's a good chance I'll have to see him again, especially if he says yes and lets Joey out of his contract." Vinnie felt not one twinge of guilt at this sort of lie. "Has it occurred to you what it would be like if I just disappeared from Dead Dog? I just bought the place a year ago, then I'm gone? It'll look hinkey and it could be bad for Joey and for Dead Dog—and for any other artist who has a contract with S—Steelgrave. This all has to look legit."

"We know that," Frank said, his voice edging up on a roar. "You are not the only one in this room who has experience as an undercover agent, or who knows how an investigation works!"

"Then why don't you act like it?" Vince yelled back, which might have been a mistake. You really weren't supposed to yell at your field director, even if he was acting like a dink.

Frank opened his mouth, but Uncle Mike put a hand on his arm and he closed it again, shaking his head. "Get ready to wind this whole deal up. We'll come up with a way of getting you out without it looking hinkey, tipping off Steelgrave, or creating a disturbance in the force."

Vinnie wanted to argue; it would have felt better to argue, except for at the end, when he lost the argument and no longer had Frank—and maybe even Uncle Mike—on his side at all anymore. And he was thinking that if he was ever going to get back to undercover work, he would need that.

"Why don't you just arrest me again? I'm already playing up being disenchanted with the music business—which is easy since it's sure true. Bust me a few times on top of it, that way it'll look real when I sell the place to Bobby. And you guys can move me from one cage to another."

Neither of them met his eye. Uncle Mike said, "That's a good idea."

Frank followed itup with, "I've moved out." He said it gently. "I thought it was for the best."

"I'm letting him stay with me for as long as I can stand him," Uncle Mike added.

"Sounds good," Vince said and then, "I've gotta go, I still have to pretend I'm running Dead Dog. Don't forget to arrest me later."

Vince's first assignment had been investigating Knox Pooley, who'd been running land swindles up and down the Florida panhandle. The whole thing had been textbook perfect. It took the allotted amount of time; there were no injuries, let alone fatalities; everyone they were after was arrested with evidence strong enough to assure convictions; and the money was there, waiting to be seized and returned to the senior citizens who had been swindled out of it. There was no way it could have gone better.

It was a shame, because that picture perfection in no way prepared him for Mel and Susan Profitt.

Vinnie did not have sex with Susan Profitt, and the only ones who believed that were Vinnie and Susan—and possibly not even Susan, after a while.

Rebuffing her advances had not been a matter of taste or morals, but expediency and the will to survive. The weird thing she had with her brother told Vinnie that sleeping with her would complicate every single thing from then on, not to mention very possibly endangering his life, if Mel found out. He had no way of knowing that Mel always found out about Susan's extracurricular bed-hopping because she told him. It wasn't serious, it didn't matter.

Until it did matter because Vinnie had said no. Nobody said no to Susan, at least not more than once. But Vinnie did, and he and stuck to his guns.

Suddenly, Vinnie was forbidden fruit and Susan was besotted and Mel was angry and Roger was amused and Vinnie didn't know what to do. Saying yes at the outset would probably have been the right move, but saying yes now seemed to carry the danger Vinnie thought saying yes at the outset carried.

And maybe Vinnie should have expected Susan to get clingier and needier after her abduction—and it wasn't Mel she was clinging to, only Vinnie could keep her safe.

And Mel got loopier than he'd been before, loopier than anybody had ever seen him (except maybe Susan, who wasn't saying). Which was how the Profitt case literally blew up.

They all, every last one of them, from Frank and his Lifeguard to the OCB shrinks to the nameless, humorless men who questioned him like he was really a Russian spy, looked at him like he was crazy when he told them about Mel's phony bomb hunts, how he and Roger would be sent to search the ship for explosive devices, and how sometimes they found something, a fake something, a little present from Mel to keep them on their toes.

So they kind of expected stuff like that, fake bombs from Mel. And they both knew that it was certainly possible that some real enemy of Mel's could have gotten a real bomb on the Hotei. But neither of them expected a real bomb on Mel's boat planted by Mel himself. There were many, many things Vince didn't know about Roger Lococco, but that was one thing he was one hundred percent sure of, that he hadn't expected this. Mel's boat was his home. Who planted a bomb in his own home?

Later, Vince realized it was a metaphor. He had been the bomb in Mel's home, and it only made sense to use a bomb against a bomb. Roger was collateral damage.

When it went off, Vince ended up with a concussion, a broken arm and some cuts and bruises. Roger ended up in intensive care.

Vince had gone back—because he took Roger's warnings about just disappearing seriously, he wasn't making his family an easy target for Mel Profitt's paranoid revenge. And at that point, even Frank agreed it was the right thing to do because Vince didn't find out until he got back that it had been Mel's bomb that blew the two of them—and a sizeable section of the Hotei—up. The boat was in dry dock, being repaired. Mel had had the workmen on retainer from the moment he planted the bomb.

He and Susan had been safely away at a party.

He'd treated the whole thing like a joke. Vince had arrived at his room at the George V to find it filled with roses, for God's sake, and a note of apology. It was a good thing Mel wasn't in the room, or Vince might have killed him, beaten him to death with the goddamned roses.

So, things were bad—edging up on worse. And then Roger disappeared from the hospital.

Vince reviewed the hospital security footage himself—twice, once in his role as Mel's de facto head of security and once as an OCB agent, with Frank sitting next to him. There was nothing. The cameras only covered the halls, not the rooms or much of outside—certainly not outside a fourth floor room, who would they be expecting to catch, Spiderman?

Had Roger somehow been faking his condition? Did he disappear under his own steam, or was he taken? Nobody knew. Nobody could even really guess.

Well, Mel could, and did. Roger had been a spy, Roger was working for the Enemy.

Mel shifting from loopy into full on paranoid "they're coming to get me" crazy was about as predictable as the sun coming up the the east, but Susan joining him? She who used to talk him down from his heights of nuttiness. Her crazy—at least in Vince's experience, and what Roger had told him—was of the quiet, implacable delusional quality. The earth was flat, darling, and if you didn't believe it—and she'd give a condescending little laugh and go on about her business.

That left Vince as the voice of reason. The voice of reason doesn't get to sleep, barely gets to eat, and is lucky if he can take a ten minute break alone in the can because the voice of reason is very busy explaining that, yes, that picture has always been there, and no, it's not hiding anything. Really. There's no need to take a fire axe to the wall.

Well, all right. The picture will cover the hole anyway, and they can always re-plaster, and new lamps? Brand new, from the store, because these lamps might have integrated listening devices, the kind you can't see because they're part of the regular wiring (and because they don't exist). Sure, he'd hop right on over to K-Mart and pick up some different lamps—

And blankets? Because these are poisoned, soaked in something that smells like fabric softener but that contains a deadly concoction that will absorb right into your skin and—

and—

and. On and on it went, Mel whirling dervishly, Susan spinning right along with him, and Vince just trying to keep his head on straight.

Afterward, Vince honestly couldn't remember what had precipitated the shooting. All he knew was they were both yelling, with Susan bouncing back and forth between them, like a game of Pong where the two paddles don't like each other. Vinnie thought it was just yelling until Mel had his gun out and was shooting at him.

A bullet grazed Vinnie's hip—Mel was aiming kind of low, making a point, maybe. Vinnie hadn't really meant to kill him, but he was exhausted, his right arm was still in a cast and he was feeling very vulnerable, so training kicked in and he put three bullets Mel's chest

He was still in in a daze, just standing there watching Susan fall to her knees, screaming Mel's name, he wasn't thinking at all or he would have grabbed her. One minute she was hugging Mel's bleeding body, the next she was lying on top of him, the last gunshot still echoing. Her aim had been better than Mel's, but her own head was a much closer target.

That had been the end of the Profit case.

And they still had no idea where Roger was. If Vince had felt like helping them find him, he'd have suggested looking on warm beaches with very white sand. Roger talked about those a lot.

Considering how much Profitt money the feds carted off, looking at the Profitt investigation as anything but a win was crazy. It just didn't feel like a win. It felt like a sick joke.

None of this was Vinnie's fault; they all said that. But they said it like they didn't really believe it, and they said it like they didn't really believe him.

Except for Frank, who maybe really believed him because when Vinnie asked him if he couldn't please come home, he got him a softball.

At least, he'd thought it was a softball

It wasn't. It was a big mess.

In some ways, Dead Dog was worse than working for Mel.

Not that Mel's craziness had been better than what he'd run into in the music industry, but with Mel you could at least see the lines of demarcation. In the music business there were things that were immoral but perfectly legal, things that were illegal but everybody did them, things that were legal but nobody did them—because nobody had ever done them—and things that would have been illegal but nobody thought to write laws against them because who could have conceived anybody would do them? This case had been like being in a maze with no walls. Which made no sense. Which was exactly right.

Maybe that's why it had been such a relief to meet with Sonny Steelgrave, an old-fashioned mob guy whose rules Vinnie understood the way he understood gravity. And that was why his present investigation segueing into an investigation of him seemed heaven-sent. He got to escape the asylum.

Instead they were sending him into exile and expecting to be happy about it.

Frank talked about him going back to his real life because Frank didn't know he didn't have a real life to go back to.

When he'd first gone inside to set his cover, his whole family had followed his mother's example and cut him dead—all but his cousin, Danny, and his brother, Pete. Pete hadn't been enthusiastic, but he'd been supportive. He approved of Vince trying to make the world a better place.

But then their mother died while he was debriefing from Pooley, died without knowing he really wasn't swindling old people in Florida.

And then came the damned Profitt case. Pete approved of him helping old people get their life savings back, but once he moved on to the Profitts, all he saw was the glitz and the glamor, the helicopters and the swanky hotels, rubbing shoulders with the rich and decadent. Pete still believed he slept with Susan. And it made him retroactively angry that his brother was wasting his time with these people instead of coming clean with their mother, as though he'd been socializing with the Rockefellers and—whoever, as though their crimes didn't touch people like his parishioners just as much as the Knox Pooleys of the world.

As though Vinnie had been having fun instead of nearly getting killed.

Dead Dog made it even worse. Apparently Pete was fine with rich record company owners screwing over the artists who made them rich. And what good Vinnie quitting would do now anyway, Pete hadn't been able to explain; it just angered him on general principles that his brother went to parties when their mother was dead. Vinnie didn't point out that Pete went to wedding and baptismal parties, he went to wakes that sure looked like parties—it was part of his job. But somehow it wasn't the same.

The big problem was, in his heart, Vinnie agreed with Pete.

Their most recent conversation had ended with Pete's terse, "I don't think we should talk for a while," which infuriated Vinnie because Pete had called him, apparently just to make him feel guilty for killing their mother.

"Sounds good to me," he'd responded and hung up.

Maybe all this would be easier if Vinnie had liked Frank.

He tried to like him. He thought he was funny, sometimes. But it mostly seemed like Frank didn't like him, and that made it tough. Frank blamed him for the whole mess the Profitt investigation turned into.

Maybe all this would be easier if Stan hadn't retired, but he was down in Florida now with relatives who lived in cold climates coming to visit. He'd sent a postcard when he first got there.

Anyway, as it was, Vinnie wasn't happy. When he'd started this whole thing, he'd understood the trajectory of an OCB career. But undercover work was—it was like flying. If he'd never experienced that feeling, he could probably have started work behind a desk and been just fine with it, but now—

Giving up everything for that was one thing, but giving up everything to be stuck behind a desk, to be an administrator, was—he didn't want to be put in a cage. He'd spent eighteen months in one, then four years flying, and the prospect of spending the rest of his working life in a gray flannel cage did not fill him with joy.

It was crazy, but he wanted to run away.

Frank was right about one thing: trying to put Sonny in jail would be hard because Vinnie really did like him. He just wanted to stay undercover because there was nothing to go back to in that "real life."

"Where have you been?" Dave asked. He was, once again, waiting to ambush Sonny when he got off the elevator. If this kept up, Sonny was going to start climbing the damn stairs to get to his office.

Sonny just stared at him. It was eight in the morning, and while he usually got in earlier, since when was Dave—since when was Dave doing any of the things he'd been doing lately?

"I've got information for you."

"About what?" Sonny really didn't want to know but he had to ask.

"There was a strange man living in Terranova's apartment," Dave said.

"Who is he?" Sonny kept walking towards his office.

Dave trailed along after him. "Don't know. We couldn't get a picture, he isn't living there anymore. But we talked to the neighbors."

"What do you mean, 'we'?" Sonny asked. He didn't slam the door in his brother's face, and Dave followed him in. "Were you canvassing the building?

"No," Dave said uncomfortably. "Of course not."

Well, that didn't make sense. "Dave. Who talked to the neighbors?"

"I sent a couple of the guys around," Dave admitted. "I told them to be circumspect."

"What did you send them for?" Sonny asked. He'd bet the guys Dave sent couldn't even define circumspect.

"To find out more about Terranova!"

I'm not going to hit him, Sonny told himself. I'm not going to hit him. He sat down behind his desk to keep him away from his brother. "And what did you find out?"

"I told you, there was a strange man living in his apartment for a while."

"Dave. Why do you keep calling him a strange man? Because the neighbors don't know him? I'm sure Terranova knows who he is."

"Sonny, what's going on? You never used to act like this. You know we gotta check out anybody we do business with."

"Dave. What do you think I'm saying to him? This is legitimate business. We share Joey with this guy's company, that's all. Even if he was a cop, he's not going to get anything just from me letting Joey go on the road. I'm going to sign the contract and then I doubt I'll ever see him again." He didn't have to tell Dave he'd already signed the contract, and he didn't have to tell him about Hollywood. Hell, he didn't have to tell Dave anything.

"Do you wanna hear about this guy or not?" Dave asked.

"Yeah, sure."

"He's kinda short, in his early forties, wears glasses." Dave stopped, looking very satisfied with this useless information.

"Sounds suspicious. I say we track him down and dust him."

"Sonny!"

"Dave!"

"You don't know who he might be!"

"I don't care who he is!"

Dave played what he thought was his trump card. "And besides him, there was a gimp there early this morning."

Sonny waited, counting seconds until there was two full minutes of silence between them. "So?"

"So who is he?"

"How do I know? Have you got somebody staking out Terranova's apartment?"

"No," Davie lied.

"Yeah, great, well, call him off. Quit worrying about Terranova and go do some work!"

Dave was sulking when he left.

Frank didn't waste any time; he had Vinnie picked up that afternoon.

Vinnie was practicing his George Raft impression—flipping a nickel up in the air and catching it, without looking at it—when an angry uniform came in and told him he was free to go. Though the way he put it was, "Get out," as though Vinnie had come in on his own and was trespassing.

Vinnie dropped his nickel. "I thought the feds wanted me."

"Fuck the feds, your lawyer got you cut loose."

I don't have a lawyer, almost came out of Vinnie's mouth because he didn't. "What lawyer?" sounded a little smarter.

"Do I look like the Information Desk?"

There was no right answer to that so Vinnie didn't say anything. He picked up his nickel from where it had rolled under his chair and walked out of the interrogation room. Where the hell was Frank?

"Mr. Terranova?" The man waiting for him in the hall had to be the lawyer. Vinnie had never seen him before.

"Yeah. Who are you?"

"Marvin Ketchell." He offered a card that Vinnie took because he couldn't think what else to do. "If you have further need of my services," he explained.

"Thanks."

And Ketchell gave him a nod and left.

What the fuck?

Vinnie went down the first subway entrance he saw, intending on going to Dead Dog. After he bought his token, he went to a pay phone and called his Uncle.

"Agent 4587, Day Code Style Section week street off."

"This is an unexpected pleasure," Uncle Mike said.

"Unexpected for me, too," Vince said. "Did you hear I got busted this morning?"

"Yeah, Frank's supposed to be coming to question you pretty soon. Am I your one phone call?"

"Nah, I pretended to call Pete. Then they put me back in the box, and then my lawyer came and got me out."

There was a silence while Uncle Mike processed this. "Say what?"

"My lawyer. His name's Marvin Ketchell and he got me out."

"Where are you now?" Uncle Mike asked, and his friendly warmth had been replaced by no-nonsense concern.

"Pay phone at the 14th Street station. I'm just about to go back to my office. You think I shouldn't?"

"I think something weird is going on. But your office should be OK. I'll get in touch with Frank."

"Thanks, Uncle."

Back at Dead Dog, Bobby met him at the door. "Where have you been?"

"I got arrested!" Vinnie snarled at him.

Bobby took a step back, like he was afraid Vinnie might bite him. "For what?"

"For having a last name that ends in a vowel, for having done time, for—I don't know!"

"OK, I'm sorry," Bobby said. "Are you OK?"

"Yeah, I'm fine, I'm just—fed up. You know? So, I did some time, but that's been years ago. But cops like to put you in a box and then they want you to stay in it."

"Maybe you meeting with Steelgrave's got something to do with it," Bobby suggested.

"Maybe so," Vinnie sighed.

"What did they charge you with?" Bobby persisted. Vinnie could hardly say, "nothing," so he just gave him a dark look. "All right, all right, forget I asked. You missed your meeting with Winston Newquay."

"Did you handle things?" Vinnie asked.

"No, I didn't handle things. I don't have the authority to handle things, unless you changed protocol without telling me."

"What's got you in such a foul mood?" Vinnie asked. "Nobody arrested you."

"It would have been more fun than listening to Newquay," Bobby said, and Vinnie couldn't really argue with that.

"Well, get him on the phone, I'll talk to him, work something out."

"He's not going to talk to you. First, because you're calling him so he's got the power, and second because you stood him up and you need to be taught a lesson. The mob's not the only one with rules you have to know."

"Call him anyway," Vinnie said and went to his office. When his phone rang, he picked up the receiver and said, "Terranova," in a surly voice.

It was Uncle Mike. "Your aunt Cecelia would like to have dinner with you." 

"OK, how about at my place at seven? I've got an appointment to get my car looked at at five."

"I'll pass that along."

The second Vinnie put down the receiver, the phone rang again. "Terranova."

"Still as charming as ever," Sonny said.

"Hey, Sonny, what's up? What can I do for you?"

"Just checking to be sure you didn't get picked up for littering or jaywalking."

And then it all made sense. "That was your lawyer?"

Sonny laughed. "Yeah, I heard you were inside again, so I sent Marvin. From what I know about you, you'd've hired that party planner. That's probably how you got locked up the first time."

Vinnie didn't know what to say. He was simultaneously very touched and very worried. How had Sonny even known he'd been arrested? Why did he care—enough to send a lawyer? But he was the only one Vinnie knew who wouldn't just let him stay in jail.

"How did you even know?" Vinnie asked.

"I got eyes and ears everywhere," Sonny said.

"Like Santa Claus?"

"Yeah!" Sonny said. "Exactly!"

"I can't tell you how much I appreciate it," Vinnie said, and he meant it.

"Hey, he's on retainer, I like finding things for him to do," Sonny said. "Wha'd they get you for, anyway?"

"Nothing! Since the whole Profitt thing, there's a fed who's been after me. He just can't believe I'm not head of Crime, Inc. or something."

"I knew I'd seen you somewhere—it was your picture at the post office."

"Yeah, that's me, the FBI's most wanted. Thank you, Sonny. I really owe you one."

"I'll keep that in mind," Sonny said.

When the phone rang the third time, it was the pompous voice of Winston Newquay. "Mr. Terranova. Please tell your lapdog to stop bothering my secretary. We will not be doing business."

"Yeah, that's what I wanted to tell you. Glad you already know it." And he hung up. "Hey!" he yelled out at his secretary. "If Winston Newquay calls, hang up on him!"

Bobby appeared in his doorway. "What are you doing?"

"Simple psychology: if you can't catch someone by chasing them, make them chase you."

"And what if he doesn't chase?" Bobby asked.

"Look, you said Newquay wouldn't deal with Dead Dog, right?"

"Right."

"So there's no point to us chasing him, right?"

"Ri-i-i-ght." Bobby stretched out the word like he didn't really want to agree.

"So, why waste our time? He either calls back or he doesn't. If he wasn't going to call anyway, what have we lost? And this way, we get to hang up on him a few times."

"I gotta admit, there's a certain appeal to that. OK, we'll try it your way."

"Thank you."

At five, Vince drove to Rocky's Auto Repair where he left his car in a bay and went to the office. Frank was there waiting for him.

"What happened?" Frank yelled.

"You didn't charge me with anything!" Vince yelled back.

"You weren't supposed to contest the charges—"

"There weren't any charges, and I didn't!"

"Where did the lawyer come from?"

"Sonny sent him," Vince said, this time speaking quietly. He kind of wanted to laugh.

"What?"

"He somehow heard I got busted and sent his lawyer to get me out. The lawyer found out there were no charges, which is good—"

"Good?" Frank asked. "Good?!"

"Yeah, Frank, good. Because I got the feeling if there had been charges, Sonny would've bailed me out and then I'd've owed him actual money. The lawyer, he keeps on retainer, so it was a favor but a free one."

Frank was shaking his head. "I can't believe how deep you've dug yourself in."

"I haven't been digging! I just fell in! The lawyer said it was the worst arrest he'd ever seen and he'd like to have a word with you." Now he did laugh.

Frank just looked at him, that look Vince hated. "I know I said you'd be posted in the New York office, but when you leave Dead Dog, maybe you should leave the East Coast for a while."

"Yeah, maybe," Vince agreed.

"I know," Frank said gently. "Your family's here. But it won't be forever."

Vince wasn't going to tell Frank that his family didn't enter into it. Without realizing it or meaning to, Vinnie had given his family a test: was their love unconditional?

Their answer had been a hard no.

In the light of that, how could he go back, take off the mask and say, "It's OK for you to love me again, I'm not the Beast, I'm the Prince."? He couldn't. He didn't want to. Fuck their conditional love.

He didn't want to feel that way but he couldn't seem to make himself feel any other way.

Maybe when it was all over, he'd talk to the OCB shrink about it.

"Yeah," Vince agreed. "That might be for the best."

So, Dead Dog threw a bon voyage party for Joey.

Or the Royal Diamond did.

In the end, it was hard to tell. To compensate for the lack of neutrality in the venue, Maureen had plastered Dead Dog's name all over everything.

It was a glitzy, glamory night, with lots of important people there—important in the music industry, not in real life. Vinnie went stag because he didn't know who the hell he'd take to something like this.

Sonny came with a dark haired, decidedly unglitzy, angular girl. She looked nice in her silver and white dress, but she didn't look quite convincing in it. She did look amazingly happy. Vinnie guessed she was someone Sonny had known from Arthur Avenue, and he was surprised that was the kind of girl he'd bring to this shindig, unless he was just being nice.

Vinnie didn't think he was being nice. He looked unhappy.

Sonny kept trying to lose Theresa, but she had a hold of her arm like she already owned it. "It's all so pretty," she kept saying, and finally she let loose when he offered to get her a glass of champagne punch.

"Are you being shot at dawn?"

Sonny turned to snap at whoever the asshole was who'd whispered that near his ear and found Vinnie smiling at him. He smiled back.

"You got anything with real booze in it?" he asked.

"Must be somewhere, this's a casino, right?" Vinnie asked.

"Yeah." He glanced over at Theresa, who was talking to Eddie Tempest.

"I never saw a guy so unhappy to be at a party. Are you jealous 'cause Maureen put out too many balloons with Dead Dog on them?"

"Yeah, later I'm gonna take you out back to teach you a lesson about proper party etiquette," Sonny said, chuckling in spite of himself.

"What's the matter?" Vinnie didn't know why he was pressing this, it wasn't even any of his business.

"I think this is what my wedding's gonna end up looking like," Sonny answered.

"You're getting married?" Vinnie asked, and when Sonny just glared at him, "You want me to save you the leftover balloons?"

"You're an asshole," Sonny said, but not like he thought it was a bad thing. "I gotta get back."

"Yeah, look, Maureen wanted us to do some kind'a joint farewell sendoff crap—I think she counted the words so we'd have an equal number—" Sonny snorted a laugh. "But I don't give a fuck, you wanna do the whole thing?"

Sonny waved dismissively. "You think there are people here who don't know why they're here?"

"I think if there are, who cares about them?" Vinnie said.

"I'll second that. Fuck the speech, I've known him longer, I'll just say something about wishing Joey luck."

"Sounds good to me."

"You wanna sneak out the back way and go bowling?" Sonny asked.

"You gonna ditch your date?"

"My brother's the one invited her, he can take her home. She might as well start getting used to me having to leave parties for business."

"Oh, bowling business," Vinnie said. "Glad I wore my tux."

"You are an asshole," Sonny said, with what sounded like growing fondness. "Meet me out back, right after I give Joey his send-off."

"You're serious?" Vinnie asked.

"I've never wanted to go bowling so bad in my life," Sonny said.

"Do you even know how to bowl?"

Sonny didn't answer him. He was standing at the end of the lane, holding his ball, staring at the pins as though they might have a message for him. He'd been doing that the whole game.

Vinnie himself was bowling a great game; he was close to 300.

He watched Sonny, who looked ridiculous, wearing a tux with bowling shoes, but Vinnie wasn't going to say anything about that since he doubted he looked any less ridiculous.

Fortunately, the place was pretty much deserted. Two in the morning on a Tuesday wasn't a big bowling scene in Atlantic City.

"Sonny?"

"Huh? What?" Sonny turned around to look at him.

"Do you even know how to bowl?"

Sonny scowled at Vinnie. "Of course I know how to bowl!"

"Yeah? Well, eight frames in, you've thrown eleven gutter balls. You know you're supposed to be hitting the pins with the ball, right?"

For a second the scowl deepened, then Sonny laughed. "I've got stuff on my mind."

"You want to forget the bowling?" Vinnie asked.

Sonny turned his back on him, backed up, and made his approach, then threw the ball. It was a beautiful strike. Sonny turned around, arms outstretched, with an enormous smile on his face. "How'm I doing?"

"Well, with that strike, you've got a 47," Vinnie said.

"Forty-seven?" Sonny demanded. "What? Let me see that!"

Vinnie showed him the scorecard and Sonny glared at it, his lips moving as he totaled up the numbers. Vinnie waited to be accused of cheating, but Sonny just tossed the card on the floor. "I'm not in the mood to bowl," he said.

"Then I'm sure glad we came here," Vinnie said. Again there was an angry flicker in Sonny's eyes, followed by a laugh. "You wanna tell me what's going on?"

Sonny sat down next to him, picked up his beer, and drained the cup. "I got a call from an old friend this morning. I've known the guy forever. A while back he asked me to find his kid a job, so I did. You know why the guy called?"

"No idea," Vinnie said.

"To apologize. He told me the kid wasn't interested, he doesn't like our line of work."

Vinnie waited, but Sonny didn't say anything else.

"So you don't need to find him a job," Vinnie said finally.

"Yeah. Arnie—my friend—he's all upset because he thought I'd be upset."

"But you aren't," Vinnie said.

"No, what do I care about his kid? And you know something, the kid's right."

"What do you mean?" Vinnie asked.

"I mean, not everybody's cut out for this work. And what you do changes who you are." Sonny took Vinnie's cup of beer and drank it. "You remember that idea I had?"

"The one you wouldn't tell me what it was? Yeah, I remember."

"Yeah. I think we ought'a go to California."

"Yeah? You wanna be my manager?" Vinnie asked. "I gotta warn you, that Redford guy's still out there."

Sonny shook his head and pulled two plane tickets out of his breast pocket. He handed one to Vinnie. "You and me, pal, you and me ought'a be there when Joey goes on _The Tonight Show,_ surprise him. Whaddaya say?"

"I think that's the best idea I've heard in a long time," Vinnie said, taking the ticket.

Frank was going to kill him.

"It was part of the signing deal," VInnie said. It was close to dawn and he was driving home, trying to figure out how his life had become so insanely complicated. He was going to Hollywood with Sonny Steelgrave and when Frank found out, Frank was going to kill him.

Dave was going to kill him.

There was no way Sonny could explain to his brother that this Vinnie Terranova was exactly the guy he'd been looking for. He was smart, he looked like the guy you'd cast as the hero, he was funny, and he knew what Sonny was talking about even before the words came out of his mouth. He was like a brother who didn't judge him all the time. He was like a best friend.

"It was part of the signing deal," Vinnie said again, trying to sound believable. It wasn't easy because it was a lie. "You're not supposed to lie to Frank," he told himself, but he didn't care. In a few weeks—or maybe days—he'd be disappearing, Frank would be out of his life, so what difference did it make? And he wanted to go to Hollywood with Sonny. He wanted to do something fun before this case was over, before he turned into the man in the gray flannel suit.

Maybe he wouldn't tell Frank until it was time to leave for the airport. Or until he got back.

In the end, Vince called Uncle Mike and arranged to see Frank on Wednesday morning.

"What's the matter with you?" Frank asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean, you look awful."

"Oh, I never got to bed last night, what with the party for Joey." Vinnie decided not to mention bowling with Sonny, which had kept him out until dawn.

"Youth is wasted on the young. What's the big emergency?"

"I'm going to Los Angeles this evening," Vinnie said. "With Sonny. He wants to see Joey on _The Tonight Show,_ and take him out to dinner afterwards."

Frank's mouth opened, but no words came out. "You're doing what?"

"We're going to see Joey on _The Tonight Show._ Frank, I—"

"So, you're just going to take a little trip to Hollywood with Sonny Steelgrave?" He didn't sound angry. He sounded . . . resigned, like it didn't really matter. Vinnie should have been happy he wasn't angry or yelling, but he wasn't. Frank seemed to have shrunk or deflated or something. "What does he need you there for? What does he even need to be there for?"

"I don't know Frank. I only agreed because it got Joey's contract signed. I never expected him to follow up on it."

"What I should do is arrest you again, this time with charges Steelgrave's lawyers won't be able to punch holes in, and take you to Quantico until it's time for your next assignment." Vince started to say something—he wasn't sure what—but Frank cut him off. "Don't say anything." His voice had gotten disturbingly quiet. Vince had never heard him like this before.

Frank took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes with both hands, the glasses dangling precariously between the ring and little fingers of his right hand. Then he took a deep breath, stopped rubbing his eyes, and hunted in his pockets until he found a handkerchief, which he used to polish his glasses. This was not something he'd ever seen Frank do, and somehow it was disturbing.

With his glasses back where they belonged, Frank studied Vince, like maybe, with his glasses dirty, he hadn't seen him properly before and this new, better sight would help him work things out. It made Vince even more uncomfortable. It made him wish he wore glasses or something, that he had some kind of prop to give him something to do with his hands. It made him wish he'd never quit smoking back when he started college. He resisted the urge to jingle the change in his pocket, mostly because it was something he'd noticed Sonny did and somehow he felt like Frank would know that and it would count against him.

He needed Frank to quit staring at him before he cracked up right here in this fake garage.

"Superducks." Frank shook his head.

"Would you quit blaming me for that? I didn't ask Stan to start calling me a superduck. I don't even know what the fuck a superduck is, or why it's a good thing."

"He was a bad training officer," Frank enunciated at him sharply. "He took potentially good agents and spoiled you and let the rest of us deal with the consequences. He got two guys killed. You're lucky you weren't number three. And he sleeps fine at night while I stay up worrying!"

Vince wanted to defend Stan, but a part of him wondered if Frank was right. He liked Stan—loved him, really—but that didn't mean Stan was a good training officer. And Frank was acting weird enough already; he'd closed his eyes and was breathing deeply. Vince didn't want to start anything so he just stood there and waited.

When Frank opened his eyes, he seemed surprised to see Vince was still there. "Go. Call me when you get back in town."

As he was leaving, Vinnie was pretty sure he heard Frank say, "It's not just things you love you gotta let go."

"Sonny, I love you." Dave walked into his office, made this declarative statement, then just stood there, looking at him like—something. Like Sonny was supposed to say or do something with it. Sonny had no idea what.

"Yeah?" Sonny asked, looking up at him from behind his desk. "Well, I love you, too, Dave. You're my brother," he added, though he couldn't have explained why. They both knew this.

"Sonny. I want what's best for you," Dave said.

Ah, there it was. If Dave loved him, then what Dave wanted for him had to be what was best for him. That was some kind of logic paradox thing, but Sonny couldn't remember anything more about it than that.

"Yeah," he agreed easily. "I want what's best for you, too." Sonny almost felt like laughing, maybe because it was either that or punching his brother, and he hadn't done that in a very long time. They seem to have hit an expiration date on punching each other, maybe when Sonny got so much better at it than Dave. "But you know what I don't want?"

"Sonny," Dave said, and why the hell was he starting all his sentences with Sonny's name? Was this one of those psychological ploys or something?

Sonny interrupted him. "But you know what, Dave? Wanting what's best for me and deciding what's best for me are two different things."

Dave frowned. Sonny had derailed him, but he changed tracks pretty smoothly. "Tony hurt us."

"Yeah," Sonny agreed. "And if you weren't my brother, you'd'a been in deep shit for that, since you brought him in."

Dave seemed startled by this. "Tony was loyal—"

"Dave." Sonny knew his name too, and he could use it, if that's the game they were playing, whatever the fuck game it was. "You need to quit bringing up how Tony's betrayal weakened our organization, and then defend yourself by saying Tony was loyal. Tony wasn't loyal; he betrayed us. And you, Dave, were responsible for bringing Tony in. You keep acting like the only one who should suffer the consequences is me, but trust me, that is not going to be the case. Now, what else did you want to say?" He couldn't listen to any more of this tripe.

What was tripe, anyway?

Dave was frowning at him. "Sonny, I'm worried about you."

"Yeah, Dave, because you love me and you want what's best for me. Can you skip on down?"

"Paul's been busy—you know that."

"He always is. And so am I, Dave."

"You need to—you need to fortify yourself."

"By marrying Theresa Baglia."

Dave somehow managed to look both relieved and annoyed by Sonny's hijacking his talking points. "You need Joey's backing. With Theresa in your bed and Aldo in your pocket, you'd have more power than New Jersey ever held before."

"That's not a bad idea," Sonny said, and when his brother brightened, added, "How soon can you be out of your office?"

"What?" He went from perplexed to angry in the space of one interrogatory syllable.

"Well, if I'm giving it to Aldo, you'll have to move someplace else. Downstairs, I think. There's an empty office in accounting."

"Sonny—"

If Dave said his name one more time, Sonny was going hit him.

"Go back to your office," he said quietly, "and think about what you really want." Which was exactly what Sonny was going to do once he was gone.

Dave just looked at him, angry and hurt and confused and angry and hurt. Sonny just looked back, trying to exude unbendable serenity. When Dave didn't get what he wanted—whatever that was, Sonny's surrender, maybe—he turned and slumped toward the door. He was almost out the door when he turned to look at Sonny again. "This conversation isn't over," Dave said direly.

"Yeah, well, before you start it up again, you need to make a decision. You been using Tony like a weapon against me. Before you do that again, you better know that if you draw that sword again, you'll be the one falls on it. I'll see to it." Sonny turned his chair around, ignoring his brother's shocked expression.

Sonny was having a drink in the first class lounge at JFK when Vinnie got there. He didn't look happy. When Vinnie sat down at the small table, he signaled the waiter for another drink. Vinnie waited until the scotch rocks was in front of him before saying, "I thought we were going on a happy little excursion to La-La Land. If I'd known we were heading for your execution, I'd have packed differently and worn my dark suit."

Sonny smiled. "It'll be fun." He took a sip of his drink and looked at his watch. "It's just I might've burned some bridges on my way out the door."

Vinnie waited, but Sonny didn't say anything. "Well, go on! You can't just throw that out and not give details. Wha'd you do?"

Sonny looked at his watch. "In two hours we'll be in the air and I'll be missing my engagement party."

"What?" Vinnie was confused.

"You know that girl I was with last night? Theresa?"

"Yeah?"

"It looks like I'm going to marry her."

"You don't sound too enthusiastic. You got a matchmaker on your back?"

"My brother picked her out. And she's a great choice, I'll give him that. She'd fit right in, she's pretty and smart, and she's—well, it's complicated, but she's a good choice."

Vinnie smiled. He knew what Sonny hadn't said: Theresa was crazy about him. "I'm confused. If she's so great, what's the problem?"

"What is it they say? Marriage is a great institution, only who wants to be in an institution?" He sighed, drained his glass, and signaled for another. "I'm not in love with her."

"Yeah, that's a problem."

"The thing is, I like Theresa. I like her a lot. But when I think about spending the rest of his life pretending, trying not to hurt her feelings, I feel like they're locking me up and turning her into a soft prison guard, pretty and ever vigilant. Every time I do something Dave doesn't want me to, she'd rat me out—and she'd be doing it for his my good because she loves me. If I marry Theresa, in a month I'll be living in Short Hills."

"Never been to Short Hills," Vinnie said. "Do they call it Short Hills because they got really short hills there?"

"It doesn't surprise me that you did time," Sonny said, "but with that smart mouth of yours, I am surprised you made it out in one piece."

"What do you mean?" Vinnie asked. "I happen to be very charming."

"Sure you are." Sonny sighed and returned to the subject. "I'm gonna spend my life pretending I love her and wishing she'd go away—or I won't pretend, I'll hurt her and everybody'll think I'm a creep until I'll believe it myself. And the truth is, it's my brother who's the creep, using a nice girl to keep me in line."

Vinnie had no idea what to say. This confession was the last thing he expected from Sonny—except, maybe, for a real confession. "What're you gonna do?" he asked.

"I dunno," Sonny said. "I dunno. But I know one thing: I'm going to enjoy this trip. If I start acting like a killjoy, gimme a shot."

"Sure," Vinnie said. "Happy to."

"Yeah, I'll bet."

Sonny had been feeling gloomy, but Vinnie's arrival perked him up. His brother's call—practically an order to come to his house for dinner—had made his thoughts start racing. What if he went to California and never came back?

Sonny had dreamed about Theresa in the short nap he'd caught between bowling with Vinnie and going to his office. It hadn't been a bad dream, but he'd woke up feeling claustrophobic. He liked Theresa. Maybe he loved her, but not like if he never saw her again, it'd be the end of the world.

Did anybody really fall in love like that? He thought about the people he knew who were married or in love or both. Dave had gone head over heels for Rita, but that was years ago, and had it been love or lust? His parents had loved each other, but their marriage had seemed more like two plants that had grown together: they made each stronger, but they were so interconnected you couldn't cut one down without severely damaging the other one—and that's what had happened. Though his mother had survived his father by several years, it seemed as though large parts—the best parts—of who she was were missing.

Why would anybody want that?

What if the other person just stopped loving you?

There didn't seem to be an upside to this.

Oh, yeah, getting Joey Baggs's backing would give him some breathing space—except with Theresa hung around his neck, he wouldn't be able to breathe at all.

"You know what, Vinnie, you're lucky." They'd been sitting in a surprisingly companiable silence for a while, drinking their drinks and watching the other passengers.

"How do you figure?"

"You're starting this new thing, you've got a business, something you've dreamed of."

"Sonny. You own a casino."

"Yeah, and my name's on the building, but it's not really mine, you know? Not like Dead Dog's yours. There's all the time people I gotta answer to. But you, you're in charge'a your own life."

"It's not all tinsel and platinum albums," Vinnie said.

"What, you're getting disillusioned already?" Sonny asked.

"I wouldn't say that. I like what I'm doing but it's a lot crazier than I expected. And now with the cops on my back again—" Vinnie sighed. "Maybe I should just sell the company and stay in California."

"You know that song, _Don't Fence Me In_?"

"Yeah, sure, Cole Porter wrote it. I am in the music business, you know," Vinnie reminded him.

"Yeah, that's right. Well, in the first part, the reason the guy's saying it is because he's getting hauled off to jail. In the second, it's because he's getting hauled off to the altar. Between the two of us, we got that song covered."

"Except neither of us can sing," Vinnie said.

"Speak for yourself," Sonny said.

Vince had been replaying that conversation with Frank, where he'd been . . . given up on. It was stupid, it was incredibly, unredeemably stupid, but it felt like Pete saying they shouldn't talk for a while. No matter what he did, he did it wrong, he disappointed everybody. Frank was supposed to be on his side, but even during the Pooley investigation—the one where he got everything right and all the pieces fell in to place—Frank's primary conversational contribution was bitching about the weather, and how Vince spent his time in air conditioning while he sweated outside, and always as though this was something Vince was responsible for. Just like he was responsible for the time zone difference between California and New Jersey that lead to the growing instability of Frank's marriage, the death of his dog, and his wife kicking him out. So far Sonny was the only one who seemed to think he could do anything right.

And every time he played through that conversation, he kept ending up with the same question: what would happen if he didn't go back?

Nothing good, but nothing as bad as what would happen to Sonny if he didn't go back. Though it didn't sound like anything good was going to happen if he went back, either. This had all the signs of a political marriage, which could make other interested parties rethink their plans, or decided to move before it was too late. Vinnie didn't know who this Theresa was, but he'd be willing to bet her father was important. He'd found Sonny's soliloquy on this marriage startlingly insightful—and it explained what he'd been talking about the night before, his friend's son who didn't want to join the mob. Maybe Sonny was disillusioned with the choices he'd made.

Settled in their first class seats, Sonny sighed and said, "The way I feel right now, when this plane lands, I could get off and never get back on again, just stay and not go back."

"You might want to rethink that, we got a layover in Kansas," Vinnie said, and Sonny laughed.

"We do not! Smartass. Non-stop all the way, baby."

Vinnie liked first class. They were the only ones there and Vinnie was glad to be able to stretch his legs out and get comfortable.

"The inflight meal is wild mushroom consommé with mushroom soufflé and snipped chives followed by slow-braised Wiltshire pork belly with creamed potato, broccolini and seasonal vegetables with thyme jus—"

"What's broccolini?" Vinnie asked. "Is that like a cross between broccoli and zucchini?"

"No, sir," the flight attendant said with a patient smile. "It's similar to broccoli, but it has smaller florets."

"Oh, good, I've never liked how big the florets are on regular broccoli," Vinnie said, and Sonny resisted the urge to laugh.

"Ignore him," he said to the flight attendant. "What about dessert?"

"We have warm blackberry and vanilla clafoutis with sauce anglaise."

"English sauce?" Vinnie asked.

"It's French, actually. It's a vanilla flavored sauce, rather custardy."

"Ignore him," Sonny repeated, "he had a TV dinner for supper last night, and he didn't even heat it up." Now Vinnie laughed. "Do you have the Beaujolais?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good." To Vinnie he said, "I don't like white wine."

"What's a clafoutis, anyway?" Vinnie asked. The flight attendant had wisely decided not to get involved.

"Who knows? If you don't like it, I'll buy you an ice cream cone when we get off the plane," Sonny said.

"Would you care to watch our in-flight movie?" the flight attendant asked.

Sonny shrugged and smiled at Vinnie. "Up to you."

"Depends," Vinnie said. "What is it?"

" _Blazing Saddles,_ " the stewardess replied.

"You're kidding! I love that movie," Vinnie said.

"Yeah?" Sonny asked. Vinnie's enthusiasm made him grin. "I never saw it."

"You never saw it? Jeez, how'd you miss it? I must've seen it a dozen times when it was out. Mooch'n me went every weekend."

"I'm too busy to go to the movies," Sonny said. He looked at the flight attendant. "Don't you have anything with subtitles, he loves subtitles."

"Can I still move to coach?" Vinnie asked her.

"Siddown, siddown," Sonny said, though Vinnie'd made no move to get up. "Bring the food before you start the movie," he told the flight attendant.

Sonny made it through the mushroom stuff and half a glass of wine; after that, he was laughing too hard to risk trying to swallow anything. Vinnie thought he was going to bust a gut. He managed to finish his meal, but only because he knew where the big laughs were so he could time his eating.

The flight attendant had wisely held off on bringing dessert, and once the movie ended, Sonny went back to eating.

"OK," Sonny said, finally cutting into the pork, "OK, from now on, you pick all the movies."

Vinnie sipped his wine, watching Sonny eat. "So, if you don't go back, where would you go?" he asked.

Sonny started to say something, then stopped, smiling. "Nowhere special."

Vinnie smiled back. "Nowhere special, huh. I always wanted to go there."

When Vinnie grinned at him, Sonny knew. This was crazy, but he was going to do it. He'd finally felt like there was somebody who he could talk to who wouldn't tell him he should be saying something else. After his talk with Dave, he'd moved a bunch of money so that was OK. He'd be OK.

They'd be OK together.

Only Dave was going to kill him

He wanted to do this; he really wanted to do this; Vinnie really wanted to do this, ride off into the sunset with Sonny Steelgrave, reform him, have a life full of crazy adventures—

If Frank didn't kill him.

**Author's Note:**

> This story languished for years. I loved the idea of it, but I couldn't figure out where it was going.
> 
> And then, because of my friend Lori, I knew exactly where it should go.


End file.
